RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
About Rick Riordan
Books by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief
Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters
Percy Jackson and the Titan’s Curse
Percy Jackson and the Battle of the Labyrinth
Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian
Rick Riordan is the creator of the award-winning, bestselling Percy Jackson
series and the thrilling Kane Chronicles series. According to Rick, the idea for
the Percy Jackson stories was inspired by his son Haley. But rumour has it that
Camp Half-Blood actually exists, and Rick spends his summers there recording
the adventures of young demigods. Some believe that, to avoid a mass panic
among the mortal population, he was forced to swear on the River Styx to
present Percy Jackson’s story as fiction. Rick lives in Boston (apart from his
summers on Half-Blood Hill) with his wife and two sons. To learn more about
him and the Percy Jackson and Kane Chronicles series, visit:
www.rickriordanmythmaster.co.uk
Books by Rick Riordan
The Percy Jackson series:
PERCY JACKSON AND THE LIGHTNING THIEF
PERCY JACKSON AND THE SEA OF MONSTERS
PERCY JACKSON AND THE TITAN’S CURSE
PERCY JACKSON AND THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH
PERCY JACKSON AND THE LAST OLYMPIAN
PERCY JACKSON: THE DEMIGOD FILES
For more about Percy Jackson try:
PERCY JACKSON: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE
The Heroes of Olympus series:
THE LOST HERO
THE SON OF NEPTUNE
THE MARK OF ATHENA
HEROES OF OLYMPUS: THE DEMIGOD DIARIES
Don’t miss:
THE HOUSE OF HADES
The Kane Chronicles series:
THE RED PYRAMID
THE THRONE OF FIRE
THE SERPENT’S SHADOW
A Carter Kane/Percy Jackson Adventure ebook:
THE SON OF SOBEK
www.rickriordanmythmaster.co.uk
Praise for the Percy Jackson series:
‘A fantastic blend of myth and modern. Rick Riordan takes the reader back to the stories we love, then
shakes the cobwebs out of them’
– Eoin Colfer, author of Artemis Fowl
‘Funny . . . very exciting . . . but it’s the storytelling that will get readers hooked. After all, this is the stuff of
legends’
– Guardian
‘Riordan delivers puns, jokes and subtle wit, alongside a gripping storyline’
– Sunday Telegraph
‘Witty and inspired. Gripping, touching and deliciously satirical’
– Amanda Craig, The Times
‘One of the books of the year … vastly entertaining’
– Independent
‘It’s Buffy meets Artemis Fowl. Thumbs up’
– Sunday Times
‘Sure to become a classic’
– Sunday Express
‘Funny, clever and exciting’
– The Times
‘Cool, mad and very funny!’
– Flipside
‘Unputdownable’
– Irish Times
RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
1 • I Accidentally Vaporize My Maths Teacher
2 • Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death
3 • Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers
4 • My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting
5 • I Play Pinochle with a Horse
6 • I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom
7 • My Dinner Goes Up in Smoke
8 • We Capture a Flag
9 • I Am Offered a Quest
10 • I Ruin a Perfectly Good Bus
11 • We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium
12 • We Get Advice from a Poodle
13 • I Plunge to My Death
14 • I Become a Known Fugitive
15 • A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers
16 • We Take a Zebra to Vegas
17 • We Shop for Waterbeds
18 • Annabeth Does Obedience School
19 • We Find Out the Truth, Sort Of
20 • I Battle My Jerk Relative
21 • I Settle My Tab
22 • The Prophecy Comes True
To Haley, who heard the story first
1 I Accidentally Vaporize My Maths Teacher
Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.
If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close
this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your
birth, and try to lead a normal life.
Being a half-blood is dangerous. It’s scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed
in painful, nasty ways.
If you’re a normal kid, reading this because you think it’s fiction, great. Read
on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.
But if you recognize yourself in these pages – if you feel something stirring
inside – stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know
that, it’s only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they’ll come for you.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
My name is Percy Jackson.
I’m twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at
Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.
Am I a troubled kid?
Yeah. You could say that.
I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things
really started going bad last May, when our sixth-grade class took a field trip to
Manhattan – twenty-eight mental-case kids and two teachers on a yellow school
bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and
Roman stuff.
I know – it sounds like torture. Most Yancy field trips were.
But Mr Brunner, our Latin teacher, was leading this trip, so I had hopes.
Mr Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had
thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always
smelled like coffee. You wouldn’t think he’d be cool, but he told stories and
jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of
Roman armour and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn’t put
me to sleep.
I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn’t get
in trouble.
Boy, was I wrong.
See, bad things happen to me on field trips. Like at my fifth-grade school,
when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a
Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn’t aiming for the school bus, but of course I
got expelled anyway. And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took
a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong
lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before
that… Well, you get the idea.
This trip, I was determined to be good.
All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly red-headed
kleptomaniac girl, hitting my best friend, Grover, in the back of the head with
chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.
Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated.
He must’ve been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader
with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was
crippled. He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he
had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step
hurt him, but don’t let that fool you. You should’ve seen him run when it was
enchilada day in the cafeteria.
Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his
curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn’t do anything back to her because I was
already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death-by-inschool-suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining
happened on this trip.
‘I’m going to kill her,’ I mumbled.
Grover tried to calm me down. ‘It’s okay. I like peanut butter.’
He dodged another piece of Nancy’s lunch.
‘That’s it.’ I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.
‘You’re already on probation,’ he reminded me. ‘You know who’ll get blamed
if anything happens.’
Looking back on it, I wish I’d decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there. Inschool suspension would’ve been nothing compared to the mess I was about to
get myself into.
Mr Brunner led the museum tour.
He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey
galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange
pottery.
It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand
years.
He gathered us around a four-metre-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the
top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a stele, for a girl about our
age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he
had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was
talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs
Dodds, would give me the evil eye.
Mrs Dodds was this little maths teacher from Georgia who always wore a
black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean
enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. She had come to Yancy halfway
through the year, when our last maths teacher had a nervous breakdown.
From her first day, Mrs Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil
spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, ‘Now, honey,’ real
sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.
One time, after she’d made me erase answers out of old maths workbooks
until midnight, I told Grover I didn’t think Mrs Dodds was human. He looked at
me real serious and said, ‘You’re absolutely right.’
Mr Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.
Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele,
and I turned around and said, ‘Will you shut up?’
It came out louder than I meant it to.
The whole group laughed. Mr Brunner stopped his story.
‘Mr Jackson,’ he said, ‘did you have a comment?’
My face was totally red. I said, ‘No, sir.’
Mr Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. ‘Perhaps you’ll tell us
what this picture represents?’
I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized
it. ‘That’s Kronos eating his kids, right?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Brunner said, obviously not satisfied. ‘And he did this because…’
‘Well…’ I racked my brain to remember. ‘Kronos was the king god, and –’
‘God?’ Mr Brunner asked.
‘Titan,’ I corrected myself. ‘And… he didn’t trust his kids, who were the gods.
So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a
rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos,
into barfing up his brothers and sisters –’
‘Eeew!’ said one of the girls behind me.
‘– and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans,’ I
continued, ‘and the gods won.’
Some snickers from the group.
Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, ‘Like we’re going to use this
in real life. Like it’s going to say on our job applications, “Please explain why
Kronos ate his kids”.’
‘And why, Mr Jackson,’ Brunner said, ‘to paraphrase Miss Bobofit’s excellent
question, does this matter in real life?’
‘Busted,’ Grover muttered.
‘Shut up,’ Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.
At least Nancy got in trouble, too. Mr Brunner was the only one who ever
caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.
I thought about his question, and shrugged. ‘I don’t know, sir.’
‘I see.’ Mr Brunner looked disappointed. ‘Well, half credit, Mr Jackson. Zeus
did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him
disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been
living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan’s stomach. The gods
defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his
remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it’s
time for lunch. Mrs Dodds, would you lead us back outside?’
The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each
other around and acting like doofuses.
Grover and I were about to follow when Mr Brunner said, ‘Mr Jackson.’
I knew that was coming.
I told Grover to keep going. Then I turned towards Mr Brunner. ‘Sir?’
Mr Brunner had this look that wouldn’t let you go – intense brown eyes that
could’ve been a thousand years old and had seen everything.
‘You must learn the answer to my question,’ Mr Brunner told me.
‘About the Titans?’
‘About real life. And how your studies apply to it.’
‘Oh.’
‘What you learn from me,’ he said, ‘is vitally important. I expect you to treat it
as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.’
I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard.
I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a
suit of Roman armour and shouted: ‘What ho!’ and challenged us, sword-point
against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who
had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped. But Mr Brunner
expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact I have dyslexia and
attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No – he
didn’t expect me to be as good; he expected me to be better. And I just couldn’t
learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.
I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr Brunner took one long
sad look at the stele, like he’d been at this girl’s funeral.
He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.
The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the
foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.
Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I’d ever seen
over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the
weather all across New York state had been weird since Christmas. We’d had
massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn’t have
been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.
Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with
Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a
lady’s bag, and, of course, Mrs Dodds wasn’t seeing a thing.
Grover and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We
thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn’t know we were from that
school – the school for loser freaks who couldn’t make it elsewhere.
‘Detention?’ Grover asked.
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘Not from Brunner. I just wish he’d lay off me sometimes. I
mean – I’m not a genius.’
Grover didn’t say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to
give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better, he said, ‘Can
I have your apple?’
I didn’t have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.
I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my
mom’s apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn’t seen her
since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She’d hug me
and be glad to see me, but she’d be disappointed, too. She’d send me right back
to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in
six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn’t be able to
stand that sad look she’d give me.
Mr Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate
celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back
of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.
I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of
me with her ugly friends – I guess she’d gotten tired of stealing from the tourists
– and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover’s lap.
‘Oops.’ She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange,
as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.
I tried to stay cool. The school counsellor had told me a million times, ‘Count
to ten, get control of your temper.’ But I was so mad my mind went blank. A
wave roared in my ears.
I don’t remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting
on her butt in the fountain, screaming, ‘Percy pushed me!’
Mrs Dodds materialized next to us.
Some of the kids were whispering: ‘Did you see –’
‘– the water –’
‘– like it grabbed her –’
I didn’t know what they were talking about. All I knew was that I was in
trouble again.
As soon as Mrs Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get
her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs Dodds turned on me.
There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I’d done something she’d been
waiting for all semester. ‘Now, honey –’
‘I know,’ I grumbled. ‘A month erasing textbooks.’
That wasn’t the right thing to say.
‘Come with me,’ Mrs Dodds said.
‘Wait!’ Grover yelped. ‘It was me. I pushed her.’
I stared at him, stunned. I couldn’t believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs
Dodds scared Grover to death.
She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.
‘I don’t think so, Mr Underwood,’ she said.
‘But –’
‘You – will– stay – here.’
Grover looked at me desperately.
‘It’s okay, man,’ I told him. ‘Thanks for trying.’
‘Honey,’ Mrs Dodds barked at me. ‘Now.’
Nancy Bobofit smirked.
I gave her my deluxe I’ll-kill-you-later stare. I then turned to face Mrs Dodds,
but she wasn’t there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of
the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.
How’d she get there so fast?
I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and
the next thing I know I’ve missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the
universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counsellor
told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.
I wasn’t so sure.
I went after Mrs Dodds.
Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting
his eyes between me and Mr Brunner, like he wanted Mr Brunner to notice what
was going on, but Mr Brunner was absorbed in his novel.
I looked back up. Mrs Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the
building, at the end of the entrance hall.
Okay, I thought. She’s going to make me buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift
shop.
But apparently that wasn’t the plan.
I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we
were back in the Greek and Roman section.
Except for us, the gallery was empty.
Mrs Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the
Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.
Even without the noise, I would’ve been nervous. It’s weird being alone with
a teacher, especially Mrs Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the
frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…
‘You’ve been giving us problems, honey,’ she said.
I did the safe thing. I said, ‘Yes, ma’am.’
She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. ‘Did you really think you would
get away with it?’
The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.
She’s a teacher, I thought nervously. It’s not like she’s going to hurt me.
I said, ‘I’ll – I’ll try harder, ma’am.’
Thunder shook the building.
‘We are not fools, Percy Jackson,’ Mrs Dodds said. ‘It was only a matter of
time before we found you out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain.’
I didn’t know what she was talking about.
All I could think of was that the teachers must’ve found the illegal stash of
candy I’d been selling out of my dorm room. Or maybe they’d realized I got my
essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now
they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me
read the book.
‘Well?’ she demanded.
‘Ma’am, I don’t…’
‘Your time is up,’ she hissed. Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes
began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her
jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn’t human. She was a shrivelled
hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was
about to slice me to ribbons.
Then things got even stranger.
Mr Brunner, who’d been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled
his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.
‘What ho, Percy!’ he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.
Mrs Dodds lunged at me.
With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched
the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn’t a pen any
more. It was a sword – Mr Brunner’s bronze sword, which he always used on
tournament day.
Mrs Dodds spun towards me with a murderous look in her eyes.
My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the
sword.
She snarled, ‘Die, honey!’
And she flew straight at me.
Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally:
I swung the sword.
The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she
were made of water. Hisss!
Mrs Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow
powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulphur and a
dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were
still watching me.
I was alone.
There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.
Mr Brunner wasn’t there. Nobody was there but me.
My hands were still trembling. My lunch must’ve been contaminated with
magic mushrooms or something.
Had I imagined the whole thing?
I went back outside.
It had started to rain.
Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head.
Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain,
grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, ‘I hope Mrs Kerr
whipped your butt.’
I said, ‘Who?’
‘Our teacher. Duh!’
I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was
talking about.
She just rolled her eyes and turned away.
I asked Grover where Mrs Dodds was.
He said, ‘Who?’
But he paused first, and he wouldn’t look at me, so I thought he was messing
with me.
‘Not funny, man,’ I told him. ‘This is serious.’
Thunder boomed overhead.
I saw Mr Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he’d
never moved.
I went over to him.
He looked up, a little distracted. ‘Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your
own writing utensil in the future, Mr Jackson.’
I handed it over. I hadn’t even realized I was still holding it.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘where’s Mrs Dodds?’
He stared at me blankly. ‘Who?’
‘The other chaperone. Mrs Dodds. The maths teacher.’
He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. ‘Percy, there is no
Mrs Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs Dodds at
Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?’
2
Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death
I was used to the occasional weird experience, but usually they were over
quickly. This twenty-four/seven hallucination was more than I could handle. For
the rest of the school year, the entire campus seemed to be playing some kind of
trick on me. The students acted as if they were completely and totally convinced
that Mrs Kerr – a perky blonde woman whom I’d never seen in my life until she
got on our bus at the end of the field trip – had been our maths teacher since
Christmas.
Every so often I would spring a Mrs Dodds reference on somebody, just to see
if I could trip them up, but they would stare at me like I was psycho.
It got so I almost believed them – Mrs Dodds had never existed.
Almost.
But Grover couldn’t fool me. When I mentioned the name Dodds to him, he
would hesitate, then claim she didn’t exist. But I knew he was lying.
Something was going on. Something had happened at the museum.
I didn’t have much time to think about it during the days, but at night, visions
of Mrs Dodds with talons and leathery wings would wake me up in a cold sweat.
The freak weather continued, which didn’t help my mood. One night, a
thunderstorm blew out the windows in my dorm room. A few days later, the
biggest tornado ever spotted in the Hudson Valley touched down only fifty miles
from Yancy Academy. One of the current events we studied in social studies
class was the unusual number of small planes that had gone down in sudden
squalls in the Atlantic that year.
I started feeling cranky and irritable most of the time. My grades slipped from
Ds to Fs. I got into more fights with Nancy Bobofit and her friends. I was sent
out into the hallway in almost every class.
Finally, when our English teacher, Mr Nicoll, asked me for the millionth time
why I was too lazy to study for spelling tests, I snapped. I called him an old sot. I
wasn’t even sure what it meant, but it sounded good.
The headmaster sent my mom a letter the following week, making it official: I
would not be invited back next year to Yancy Academy.
Fine, I told myself. Just fine.
I was homesick.
I wanted to be with my mom in our little apartment on the Upper East Side,
even if I had to go to public school and put up with my obnoxious stepfather and
his stupid poker parties.
And yet… there were things I’d miss at Yancy. The view of the woods out my
dorm window, the Hudson River in the distance, the smell of pine trees. I’d miss
Grover, who’d been a good friend, even if he was a little strange. I worried how
he’d survive next year without me.
I’d miss Latin class, too – Mr Brunner’s crazy tournament days and his faith
that I could do well.
As exam week got closer, Latin was the only test I studied for. I hadn’t
forgotten what Mr Brunner had told me about this subject being life-and-death
for me. I wasn’t sure why, but I’d started to believe him.
The evening before my final, I got so frustrated I threw the Cambridge Guide to
Greek Mythology across my dorm room. Words had started swimming off the
page, circling my head, the letters doing one-eighties as if they were riding
skateboards. There was no way I was going to remember the difference between
Chiron and Charon, or Polydictes and Polydeuces. And conjugating those Latin
verbs? Forget it.
I paced the room, feeling like ants were crawling around inside my shirt.
I remembered Mr Brunner’s serious expression, his thousand-year-old eyes. I
will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson.
I took a deep breath. I picked up the mythology book.
I’d never asked a teacher for help before. Maybe if I talked to Mr Brunner, he
could give me some pointers. At least I could apologize for the big fat ‘F’ I was
about to score on his exam. I didn’t want to leave Yancy Academy with him
thinking I hadn’t tried.
I walked downstairs to the faculty offices. Most of them were dark and empty,
but Mr Brunner’s door was ajar, light from his window stretching across the
hallway floor.
I was three steps from the door handle when I heard voices inside the office.
Mr Brunner asked a question. A voice that was definitely Grover’s said, ‘…
worried about Percy, sir.’
I froze.
I’m not usually an eavesdropper, but I dare you to try not listening if you hear
your best friend talking about you to an adult.
I inched closer.
‘… alone this summer,’ Grover was saying. ‘I mean, a Kindly One in the
school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too –’
‘We would only make matters worse by rushing him,’ Mr Brunner said. ‘We
need the boy to mature more.’
‘But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline –’
‘Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance
while he still can.’
‘Sir, he saw her…’
‘His imagination,’ Mr Brunner insisted. ‘The Mist over the students and staff
will be enough to convince him of that.’
‘Sir, I… I can’t fail in my duties again.’ Grover’s voice was choked with
emotion. ‘You know what that would mean.’
‘You haven’t failed, Grover,’ Mr Brunner said kindly. ‘I should have seen her
for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy alive until next
autumn –’
The mythology book dropped out of my hand and hit the floor with a thud.
Mr Brunner went silent.
My heart hammering, I picked up the book and backed down the hall.
A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner’s office door, the shadow of
something much taller than my wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something
that looked suspiciously like an archer’s bow.
I opened the nearest door and slipped inside.
A few seconds later I heard a slow clop-clop-clop, like muffled wood blocks,
then a sound like an animal snuffling right outside my door. A large dark shape
paused in front of the glass, then moved on.
A bead of sweat trickled down my neck.
Somewhere in the hallway, Mr Brunner spoke. ‘Nothing,’ he murmured. ‘My
nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.’
‘Mine neither,’ Grover said. ‘But I could have sworn…’
‘Go back to the dorm,’ Mr Brunner told him. ‘You’ve got a long day of exams
tomorrow.’
‘Don’t remind me.’
The lights went out in Mr Brunner’s office.
I waited in the dark for what seemed like forever.
Finally, I slipped out into the hallway and made my way back up to the dorm.
Grover was lying on his bed, studying his Latin exam notes like he’d been
there all night.
‘Hey,’ he said, bleary-eyed. ‘You going to be ready for this test?’
I didn’t answer.
‘You look awful.’ He frowned. ‘Is everything okay?’
‘Just… tired.’
I turned so he couldn’t read my expression, and started getting ready for bed.
I didn’t understand what I’d heard downstairs. I wanted to believe I’d
imagined the whole thing.
But one thing was clear: Grover and Mr Brunner were talking about me
behind my back. They thought I was in some kind of danger.
The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes
swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I’d misspelled, Mr Brunner
called me back inside.
For a moment, I was worried he’d found out about my eavesdropping the
night before, but that didn’t seem to be the problem.
‘Percy,’ he said. ‘Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s… it’s for the
best.’
His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was
speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit
smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.
I mumbled, ‘Okay, sir.’
‘I mean…’ Mr Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure
what to say. ‘This isn’t the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.’
My eyes stung.
Here was my favourite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn’t
handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was
destined to get kicked out.
‘Right,’ I said, trembling.
‘No, no,’ Mr Brunner said. ‘Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say…
you’re not normal, Percy. That’s nothing to be –’
‘Thanks,’ I blurted. ‘Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.’
‘Percy –’
But I was already gone.
On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.
The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of
them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the
Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were
rich juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or
celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.
They asked me what I’d be doing this summer and I told them I was going
back to the city.
What I didn’t tell them was that I’d have to get a summer job walking dogs or
selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where
I’d go to school in the autumn.
‘Oh,’ one of the guys said. ‘That’s cool.’
They went back to their conversation as if I’d never existed.
The only person I dreaded saying goodbye to was Grover but, as it turned out,
I didn’t have to. He’d booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as I
had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.
During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle,
watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he’d always acted nervous
and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.
Before, I’d always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was
nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any more.
I said, ‘Looking for Kindly Ones?’
Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. ‘Wha – what do you mean?’
I confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr Brunner the night before the
exam.
Grover’s eye twitched. ‘How much did you hear?’
‘Oh… not much. What’s the summer-solstice deadline?’
He winced. ‘Look, Percy… I was just worried for you, see? I mean,
hallucinating about demon maths teachers…’
‘Grover –’
‘And I was telling Mr Brunner that maybe you were overstressed or
something, because there was no such person as Mrs Dodds, and…’
‘Grover, you’re a really, really bad liar.’
His ears turned pink.
From his shirt pocket, he fished out a grubby business card. ‘Just take this,
okay? In case you need me this summer.’
The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I
finally made out something like:
Grover Underwood, Keeper
Half-Blood Hill
Long Island, New York
(800)009-0009
‘What’s Half –’
‘Don’t say it aloud!’ he yelped. ‘That’s my, um… summer address.’
My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I’d never considered that his
family might be as rich as the others at Yancy.
‘Okay,’ I said glumly. ‘So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion.’
He nodded. ‘Or… or if you need me.’
‘Why would I need you?’
It came out harsher than I meant it too.
Grover blushed right down to his Adam’s apple. ‘Look, Percy, the truth is, I –
I kind of have to protect you.’
I stared at him.
All year long, I’d gotten in fights keeping bullies away from him. I’d lost
sleep worrying that he’d get beaten up next year without me. And here he was
acting like he was the one who defended me.
‘Grover,’ I said, ‘what exactly are you protecting me from?’
There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the
dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver
cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.
After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver
announced that we’d all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with
everybody else.
We were on a stretch of country road – no place you’d notice if you didn’t
break down there. On our side of the highway was nothing but maple trees and
litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt
shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.
The stuff on sale looked really good: heaping boxes of blood-red cherries and
apples, walnuts and apricots, jugs of cider in a claw-foot tub full of ice. There
were no customers, just three old ladies sitting in rocking chairs in the shade of a
maple tree, knitting the biggest pair of socks I’d ever seen.
I mean these socks were the size of sweaters, but they were clearly socks. The
lady on the right knitted one of them. The lady on the left knitted the other. The
lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn.
All three women looked ancient, with pale faces wrinkled like fruit leather,
silver hair tied back in white bandannas, bony arms sticking out of bleached
cotton dresses.
The weirdest thing was, they seemed to be looking right at me.
I looked over at Grover to say something about this and saw that the blood
had drained from his face. His nose was twitching.
‘Grover?’ I said. ‘Hey, man –’
‘Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are. Aren’t they?’
‘Yeah. Weird, huh? You think those socks would fit me?’
‘Not funny, Percy. Not funny at all.’
The old lady in the middle took out a huge pair of scissors – gold and silver,
long-bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.
‘We’re getting on the bus,’ he told me. ‘Come on.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘It’s a thousand degrees in there.’
‘Come on!’ He prised open the door and climbed inside, but I stayed back.
Across the road, the old ladies were still watching me. The middle one cut the
yarn, and I swear I could hear that snip across four lanes of traffic. Her two
friends balled up the electric-blue socks, leaving me wondering who they could
possibly be for – Sasquatch or Godzilla.
At the rear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out
of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to
life.
The passengers cheered.
‘Darn right!’ yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. ‘Everybody
back on board!’
Once we got going. I started feeling feverish, as if I’d caught the flu.
Grover didn’t look much better. He was shivering and his teeth were
chattering.
‘Grover?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What are you not telling me?’
He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. ‘Percy, what did you see back at
the fruit stand?’
‘You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They’re not like… Mrs
Dodds, are they?’
His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies
were something much, much worse than Mrs Dodds. He said, ‘Just tell me what
you saw.’
‘The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn.’
He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might’ve been
crossing himself, but it wasn’t. It was something else, something almost – older.
He said, ‘You saw her snip the cord.’
‘Yeah. So?’ But even as I said it, I knew it was a big deal.
‘This is not happening,’ Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. ‘I
don’t want this to be like the last time.’
‘What last time?’
‘Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.’
‘Grover,’ I said, because he was really starting to scare me. ‘What are you
talking about?’
‘Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me.’
This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could.
‘Is this like a superstition or something?’ I asked.
No answer.
‘Grover – that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to
die?’
He looked at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers
I’d like best on my coffin.
3
Grover Unexpectedly Loses His Trousers
Confession time: I ditched Grover as soon as we got to the bus terminal.
I know, I know. It was rude. But Grover was freaking me out, looking at me
like I was a dead man, muttering, ‘Why does this always happen?’ and, ‘Why
does it always have to be sixth grade?’
Whenever he got upset, Grover’s bladder acted up, so I wasn’t surprised
when, as soon as we got off the bus, he made me promise to wait for him, then
made a beeline for the restroom. Instead of waiting, I got my suitcase, slipped
outside, and caught the first taxi uptown.
‘East One Hundred and Fourth and First Avenue,’ I told the driver.
A word about my mother, before you meet her.
Her name is Sally Jackson and she’s the best person in the world, which just
proves my theory that the best people have the rottenest luck. Her own parents
died in a plane crash when she was five, and she was raised by an uncle who
didn’t care much about her. She wanted to be a novelist, so she spent high school
working to save enough money for a college with a good creative-writing
programme. Then her uncle got cancer, and she had to quit school in her senior
year to take care of him. After he died, she was left with no money, no family
and no diploma.
The only good break she ever got was meeting my dad.
I don’t have any memories of him, just this sort of warm glow, maybe the
barest trace of his smile. My mom doesn’t like to talk about him because it
makes her sad. She has no pictures.
See, they weren’t married. She told me he was rich and important, and their
relationship was a secret. Then one day, he set sail across the Atlantic on some
important journey, and he never came back.
Lost at sea, my mom told me. Not dead. Lost at sea.
She worked odd jobs, took night classes to get her high school diploma, and
raised me on her own. She never complained or got mad. Not even once. But I
knew I wasn’t an easy kid.
Finally, she married Gabe Ugliano, who was nice the first thirty seconds we
knew him, then showed his true colours as a world-class jerk. When I was
young, I nicknamed him Smelly Gabe. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. The guy
reeked like mouldy garlic pizza wrapped in gym shorts.
Between the two of us, we made my mom’s life pretty hard. The way Smelly
Gabe treated her, the way he and I got along… well, when I came home is a
good example.
I walked into our little apartment, hoping my mom would be home from work.
Instead, Smelly Gabe was in the living room, playing poker with his buddies.
The television was blaring. Crisps and beer cans were strewn all over the carpet.
Hardly looking up, he said around his cigar, ‘So, you’re home.’
‘Where’s my mom?’
‘Working,’ he said. ‘You got any cash?’
That was it. No Welcome back. Good to see you. How has your life been the
last six months?
Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store
clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as
if that made him handsome or something.
He managed the Electronics Mega-Mart in Queens, but he stayed home most
of the time. I don’t know why he hadn’t been fired long before. He just kept on
collecting pay cheques, spending the money on cigars that made me nauseous,
and on beer, of course. Always beer. Whenever I was home, he expected me to
provide his gambling funds. He called that our ‘guy secret’. Meaning, if I told
my mom, he would punch my lights out.
‘I don’t have any cash,’ I told him.
He raised a greasy eyebrow.
Gabe could sniff out money like a bloodhound, which was surprising, since
his own smell should’ve covered up everything else.
‘You took a taxi from the bus station,’ he said. ‘Probably paid with a twenty.
Got six, seven bucks in change. Somebody expects to live under this roof, he
ought to carry his own weight. Am I right, Eddie?’
Eddie, the superintendant of the apartment building, looked at me with a
twinge of sympathy. ‘Come on, Gabe,’ he said. ‘The kid just got here.’
‘Am I right?’ Gabe repeated.
Eddie scowled into his bowl of pretzels. The other two guys passed gas in
harmony.
‘Fine,’ I said. I dug a wad of dollars out of my pocket and threw the money on
the table. ‘I hope you lose.’
‘Your report card came, brain boy!’ he shouted after me. ‘I wouldn’t act so
snooty!’
I slammed the door to my room, which really wasn’t my room. During school
months, it was Gabe’s ‘study’. He didn’t study anything in there except old car
magazines, but he loved shoving my stuff in the closet, leaving his muddy boots
on my windowsill, and doing his best to make the place smell like his nasty
cologne and cigars and stale beer.
I dropped my suitcase on the bed. Home sweet home.
Gabe’s smell was almost worse than the nightmares about Mrs Dodds, or the
sound of that old fruit lady’s shears snipping the yarn.
But as soon as I thought that, my legs felt weak. I remembered Grover’s look
of panic – how he’d made me promise I wouldn’t go home without him. A
sudden chill rolled through me. I felt like someone – something – was looking
for me right now, maybe pounding its way up the stairs, growing long, horrible
talons.
Then I heard my mom’s voice. ‘Percy?’
She opened the bedroom door, and my fears melted.
My mother can make me feel good just by walking into the room. Her eyes
sparkle and change colour in the light. Her smile is as warm as a quilt. She’s got
a few grey streaks mixed in with her long brown hair, but I never think of her as
old. When she looks at me, it’s like she’s seeing all the good things about me,
none of the bad. I’ve never heard her raise her voice or say an unkind word to
anyone, not even me or Gabe.
‘Oh, Percy.’ She hugged me tight. ‘I can’t believe it. You’ve grown since
Christmas!’
Her red-white-and-blue Sweet on America uniform smelled like the best
things in the world: chocolate, licorice, and all the other stuff she sold at the
candy shop in Grand Central. She’d brought me a huge bag of ‘free samples’, the
way she always did when I came home.
We sat together on the edge of the bed. While I attacked the blueberry sour
strings, she ran her hand through my hair and demanded to know everything I
hadn’t put in my letters. She didn’t mention anything about my getting expelled.
She didn’t seem to care about that. But was I okay? Was her little boy doing all
right?
I told her she was smothering me, and to lay off and all that, but secretly, I
was really, really glad to see her.
From the other room, Gabe yelled, ‘Hey, Sally – how about some bean dip,
huh?’
I gritted my teeth.
My mom is the nicest lady in the world. She should’ve been married to a
millionaire, not to some jerk like Gabe.
For her sake, I tried to sound upbeat about my last days at Yancy Academy. I
told her I wasn’t too down about the expulsion. I’d lasted almost the whole year
this time. I’d made some new friends. I’d done pretty well in Latin. And
honestly, the fights hadn’t been as bad as the headmaster said. I liked Yancy
Academy. I really had. I put such a good spin on the year, I almost convinced
myself. I started choking up, thinking about Grover and Mr Brunner. Even
Nancy Bobofitt suddenly didn’t seem so bad.
Until that trip to the museum…
‘What?’ my mom asked. Her eyes tugged at my conscience, trying to pull out
the secrets. ‘Did something scare you?’
‘No, Mom.’
I felt bad lying. I wanted to tell her about Mrs Dodds and the three old ladies
with the yarn, but I thought it would sound stupid.
She pursed her lips. She knew I was holding back, but she didn’t push me.
‘I have a surprise for you,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the beach.’
My eyes widened. ‘Montauk?’
‘Three nights – same cabin.’
‘When?’
She smiled. ‘As soon as I get changed.’
I couldn’t believe it. My mom and I hadn’t been to Montauk the last two
summers, because Gabe said there wasn’t enough money.
Gabe appeared in the doorway and growled, ‘Bean dip, Sally? Didn’t you hear
me?’
I wanted to punch him, but I met my mom’s eyes and I understood she was
offering me a deal: be nice to Gabe for a little while. Just until she was ready to
leave for Montauk. Then we would get out of here.
‘I was on my way, honey,’ she told Gabe. ‘We were just talking about the trip.’
Gabe’s eyes got small. ‘The trip? You mean you were serious about that?’
‘I knew it,’ I muttered. ‘He won’t let us go.’
‘Of course he will,’ my mom said evenly. ‘Your stepfather is just worried
about money. That’s all. Besides,’ she added, ‘Gabriel won’t have to settle for
bean dip. I’ll make him enough seven-layer dip for the whole weekend.
Guacamole. Sour cream. The works.’
Gabe softened a bit. ‘So this money for your trip… it comes out of your
clothes budget, right?’
‘Yes, honey,’ my mother said.
‘And you won’t take my car anywhere but there and back.’
‘We’ll be very careful.’
Gabe scratched his double chin. ‘Maybe if you hurry with that seven-layer
dip… And maybe if the kid apologizes for interrupting my poker game.’
Maybe if I kick you in your soft spot, I thought. And make you sing soprano
for a week.
But my mom’s eyes warned me not to make him mad.
Why did she put up with this guy? I wanted to scream. Why did she care what
he thought?
‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered. ‘I’m really sorry I interrupted your incredibly
important poker game. Please go back to it right now.’
Gabe’s eyes narrowed. His tiny brain was probably trying to detect sarcasm in
my statement.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ he decided.
He went back to his game.
‘Thank you, Percy,’ my mom said. ‘Once we get to Montauk, we’ll talk more
about… whatever you’ve forgotten to tell me, okay?’
For a moment, I thought I saw anxiety in her eyes – the same fear I’d seen in
Grover during the bus ride – as if my mom too felt an odd chill in the air.
But then her smile returned, and I figured I must have been mistaken. She
ruffled my hair and went to make Gabe his seven-layer dip.
An hour later we were ready to leave.
Gabe took a break from his poker game long enough to watch me lug my
mom’s bags to the car. He kept griping and groaning about losing her cooking –
and more important, his ‘78 Camaro – for the whole weekend.
‘Not a scratch on this car, brain boy,’ he warned me as I loaded the last bag.
‘Not one little scratch.’
Like I’d be the one driving. I was twelve. But that didn’t matter to Gabe. If a
seagull so much as pooped on his paint job, he’d find a way to blame me.
Watching him lumber back towards the apartment building, I got so mad I did
something I can’t explain. As Gabe reached the doorway, I made the hand
gesture I’d seen Grover make on the bus, a sort of warding-off-evil gesture, a
clawed hand over my heart, then a shoving movement towards Gabe. The screen
door slammed shut so hard it whacked him in the butt and sent him flying up the
staircase as if he’d been shot from a cannon. Maybe it was just the wind, or some
freak accident with the hinges, but I didn’t stay long enough to find out.
I got in the Camaro and told my mom to step on it.
Our rental cabin was on the south shore, way out at the tip of Long Island. It was
a little pastel box with faded curtains, half sunken into the dunes. There was
always sand in the sheets and spiders in the cabinets, and most of the time the
sea was too cold to swim in.
I loved the place.
We’d been going there since I was a baby. My mom had been going even
longer. She never exactly said, but I knew why the beach was special to her. It
was the place where she’d met my dad.
As we got closer to Montauk, she seemed to grow younger, years of worry
and work disappearing from her face. Her eyes turned the colour of the sea.
We got there at sunset, opened all the cabin’s windows, and went through our
usual cleaning routine. We walked on the beach, fed blue corn chips to the
seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy, and all the other
free samples my mom had brought from work.
I guess I should explain the blue food.
See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this
fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my
mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed
blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue
candy from the shop. This – along with keeping her maiden name, Jackson,
rather than calling herself Mrs Ugliano – was proof that she wasn’t totally
suckered by Gabe. She did have a rebellious streak, like me.
When it got dark, we made a fire. We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.
Mom told me stories about when she was a kid, back before her parents died in
the plane crash. She told me about the books she wanted to write someday, when
she had enough money to quit the candy shop.
Eventually, I got up the nerve to ask about what was always on my mind
whenever we came to Montauk – my father. Mom’s eyes went all misty. I
figured she would tell me the same things she always did, but I never got tired of
hearing them.
‘He was kind, Percy,’ she said. ‘Tall, handsome and powerful. But gentle, too.
You have his black hair, you know, and his green eyes.’
Mom fished a blue jelly bean out of her candy bag. ‘I wish he could see you,
Percy. He would be so proud.’
I wondered how she could say that. What was so great about me? A dyslexic,
hyperactive boy with a D+ report card, kicked out of school for the sixth time in
six years.
‘How old was I?’ I asked. ‘I mean… when he left?’
She watched the flames. ‘He was only with me for one summer, Percy. Right
here at this beach. This cabin.’
‘But… he knew me as a baby.’
‘No, honey. He knew I was expecting a baby, but he never saw you. He had to
leave before you were born.’
I tried to square that with the fact that I seemed to remember… something
about my father. A warm glow. A smile.
I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it
outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even
seen me…
I felt angry at my father. Maybe it was stupid, but I resented him for going on
that ocean voyage, for not having the guts to marry my mom. He’d left us, and
now we were stuck with Smelly Gabe.
‘Are you going to send me away again?’ I asked her. ‘To another boarding
school?’
She pulled a marshmallow from the fire.
‘I don’t know, honey.’ Her voice was heavy. ‘I think… I think we’ll have to do
something.’
‘Because you don’t want me around?’ I regretted the words as soon as they
were out.
My mom’s eyes welled with tears. She took my hand, squeezed it tight. ‘Oh,
Percy, no. I – I have to, honey. For your own good. I have to send you away.’
Her words reminded me of what Mr Brunner had said – that it was best for me
to leave Yancy.
‘Because I’m not normal,’ I said.
‘You say that as if it’s a bad thing, Percy. But you don’t realize how important
you are. I thought Yancy Academy would be far enough away. I thought you’d
finally be safe.’
‘Safe from what?’
She met my eyes, and a flood of memories came back to me – all the weird,
scary things that had ever happened to me, some of which I’d tried to forget.
During third grade, a man in a black trench coat had stalked me on the
playground. When the teachers threatened to call the police, he went away
growling, but no one believed me when I told them that under his broadbrimmed hat, the man only had one eye, right in the middle of his head.
Before that – a really early memory. I was in pre school, and a teacher
accidentally put me down for a nap in a cot that a snake had slithered into. My
mom screamed when she came to pick me up and found me playing with a limp,
scaly rope I’d somehow managed to strangle to death with my meaty toddler
hands.
In every single school, something creepy had happened, something unsafe,
and I was forced to move.
I knew I should tell my mom about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs
Dodds at the art museum, about my weird hallucination that I had sliced my
maths teacher into dust with a sword. But I couldn’t make myself tell her. I had a
strange feeling the news would end our trip to Montauk, and I didn’t want that.
‘I’ve tried to keep you as close to me as I could,’ my mom said. ‘They told me
that was a mistake. But there’s only one other option, Percy – the place your
father wanted to send you. And I just… I just can’t stand to do it.’
‘My father wanted me to go to a special school?’
‘Not a school,’ she said softly. ‘A summer camp.’
My head was spinning. Why would my dad – who hadn’t even stayed around
long enough to see me born – talk to my mom about a summer camp? And if it
was so important, why hadn’t she ever mentioned it before?
‘I’m sorry, Percy,’ she said, seeing the look in my eyes. ‘But I can’t talk about
it. I – I couldn’t send you to that place. It might mean saying goodbye to you for
good.’
‘For good? But if it’s only a summer camp…’
She turned towards the fire, and I knew from her expression that if I asked her
any more questions she would start to cry.
That night I had a vivid dream.
It was storming on the beach, and two beautiful animals, a white horse and a
golden eagle, were trying to kill each other at the edge of the surf. The eagle
swooped down and slashed the horse’s muzzle with its huge talons. The horse
reared up and kicked at the eagle’s wings. As they fought, the ground rumbled,
and a monstrous voice chuckled somewhere beneath the earth, goading the
animals to fight harder.
I ran towards them, knowing I had to stop them from killing each other, but I
was running in slow motion. I knew I would be too late. I saw the eagle dive
down, its beak aimed at the horse’s wide eyes, and I screamed, No!
I woke with a start.
Outside, it really was storming, the kind of storm that cracks trees and blows
down houses. There was no horse or eagle on the beach, just lightning making
false daylight, and five-metre-high waves pounding the dunes like artillery.
With the next thunderclap, my mom woke. She sat up, eyes wide, and said,
‘Hurricane.’
I knew that was crazy. Long Island never saw hurricanes this early in the
summer. But the ocean seemed to have forgotten. Over the roar of the wind, I
heard a distant bellow, an angry, tortured sound that made my hair stand on end.
Then a much closer noise, like mallets in the sand. A desperate voice –
someone yelling, pounding on our cabin door.
My mother sprang out of bed in her nightgown and threw open the lock.
Grover stood framed in the doorway against a backdrop of pouring rain. But
he wasn’t… he wasn’t exactly Grover.
‘Searching all night,’ he gasped. ‘What were you thinking?’
My mother looked at me in terror – not scared of Grover, but of why he’d
come.
‘Percy,’ she said, shouting to be heard over the rain. ‘What happened at
school? What didn’t you tell me?’
I was frozen, looking at Grover. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing.
‘O Zeu kai alloi theoi!’ he yelled. ‘It’s right behind me! Didn’t you tell her?’
I was too shocked to register that he’d just cursed in Ancient Greek, and I’d
understood him perfectly. I was too shocked to wonder how Grover had got here
by himself in the middle of the night. Because Grover didn’t have his trousers on
– and where his legs should be… where his legs should be…
My mom looked at me sternly and talked in a tone she’d never used
before:’Percy. Tell me now!’
I stammered something about the old ladies at the fruit stand, and Mrs Dodds,
and my mom stared at me, her face deathly pale in the flashes of lightning.
She grabbed her purse, tossed me my rain jacket, and said, ‘Get to the car.
Both of you. Go!’
Grover ran for the Camaro – but he wasn’t running, exactly. He was trotting,
shaking his shaggy hindquarters, and suddenly his story about a muscular
disorder in his legs made sense to me. I understood how he could run so fast and
still limp when he walked.
Because where his feet should be, there were no feet. There were cloven
hooves.
4
My Mother Teaches Me Bullfighting
We tore through the night along dark country roads. Wind slammed against the
Camaro. Rain lashed the windshield. I didn’t know how my mom could see
anything, but she kept her foot on the gas.
Every time there was a flash of lightning, I looked at Grover sitting next to me
in the backseat and I wondered if I’d gone insane, or if he was wearing some
kind of shag-carpet trousers. But, no, the smell was one I remembered from
kindergarten field trips to the petting zoo – lanolin, like from wool. The smell of
a wet barnyard animal.
All I could think to say was, ‘So, you and my mum… know each other?’
Grover’s eyes flitted to the rearview mirror, though there were no cars behind
us. ‘Not exactly,’ he said. ‘I mean, we’ve never met in person. But she knew I
was watching you.’
‘Watching me?’
‘Keeping tabs on you. Making sure you were okay. But I wasn’t faking being
your friend,’ he added hastily. ‘I am your friend.’
‘Um… what are you, exactly?’
‘That doesn’t matter right now.’
‘It doesn’t matter? From the waist down, my best friend is a donkey –’
Grover let out a sharp, throaty ‘Blaa-ha-ha!’
I’d heard him make that sound before, but I’d always assumed it was a
nervous laugh. Now I realized it was more of an irritated bleat.
‘Goat!’ he cried.
‘What?’
‘I’m a goat from the waist down.’
‘You just said it didn’t matter.’
‘Blaa-ha-ha! There are satyrs who would trample you under hoof for such an
insult!’
‘Whoa. Wait. Satyrs. You mean like… Mr Brunner’s myths?’
‘Were those old ladies at the fruit stand a myth, Percy? Was Mrs Dodds a
myth?’
‘So you admit there was a Mrs Dodds!’
‘Of course.’
‘Then why –’
‘The less you knew, the fewer monsters you’d attract,’ Grover said, like that
should be perfectly obvious. ‘We put Mist over the humans’ eyes. We hoped
you’d think the Kindly One was a hallucination. But it was no good. You started
to realize who you are.’
‘Who I – wait a minute, what do you mean?’
The weird bellowing noise rose up again somewhere behind us, closer than
before. Whatever was chasing us was still on our trail.
‘Percy,’ my mom said, ‘there’s too much to explain and not enough time. We
have to get you to safety.’
‘Safety from what? Who’s after me?’
‘Oh, nobody much,’ Grover said, obviously still miffed about the donkey
comment. ‘Just the Lord of the Dead and a few of his blood-thirstiest minions.’
‘Grover!’
‘Sorry, Mrs Jackson. Could you drive faster, please?’
I tried to wrap my mind around what was happening, but I couldn’t do it. I
knew this wasn’t a dream. I had no imagination. I could never dream up
something this weird.
My mom made a hard left. We swerved onto a narrower road, racing past
darkened farmhouses and wooded hills and PICK YOUR OWN
STRAWBERRIES signs on white picket fences.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘The summer camp I told you about.’ My mother’s voice was tight; she was
trying for my sake not to be scared. ‘The place your father wanted to send you.’
‘The place you didn’t want me to go.’
‘Please, dear,’ my mother begged. ‘This is hard enough. Try to understand.
You’re in danger.’
‘Because some old ladies cut yarn.’
‘Those weren’t old ladies,’ Grover said. ‘Those were the Fates. Do you know
what it means – the fact they appeared in front of you? They only do that when
you’re about to… when someone’s about to die.’
‘Whoa. You said “you”.’
‘No I didn’t. I said “someone”.’
‘You meant “you”. As in me.’
‘I meant you, like “someone”. Not you, you.’
‘Boys!’ my mom said.
She pulled the wheel hard to the right, and I got a glimpse of a figure she’d
swerved to avoid – a dark fluttering shape now lost behind us in the storm.
‘What was that?’ I asked.
‘We’re almost there,’ my mother said, ignoring my question. ‘Another mile.
Please. Please. Please.’
I didn’t know where there was, but I found myself leaning forward in the car,
anticipating, wanting us to arrive.
Outside, nothing but rain and darkness – the kind of empty countryside you
get way out on the tip of Long Island. I thought about Mrs Dodds and the
moment when she’d changed into the thing with pointed teeth and leathery
wings. My limbs went numb from delayed shock. She really hadn’t been human.
She’d meant to kill me.
Then I thought about Mr Brunner… and the sword he had thrown me. Before
I could ask Grover about that, the hair rose on the back of my neck. There was a
blinding flash, a jaw-rattling boom!, and our car exploded.
I remember feeling weightless, like I was being crushed, fried and hosed down
all at the same time.
I peeled my forehead off the back of the driver’s seat and said, ‘Ow.’
‘Percy!’ my mom shouted.
‘I’m okay….’
I tried to shake off the daze. I wasn’t dead. The car hadn’t really exploded.
We’d swerved into a ditch. Our driver’s-side doors were wedged in the mud. The
roof had cracked open like an eggshell and rain was pouring in.
Lightning. That was the only explanation. We’d been blasted right off the
road. Next to me in the backseat was a big motionless lump. ‘Grover!’
He was slumped over, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. I shook his
furry hip, thinking, No! Even if you are half barnyard animal, you’re my best
friend and I don’t want you to die!
Then he groaned, ‘Food,’ and I knew there was hope.
‘Percy,’ my mother said, ‘we have to…’ Her voice faltered.
I looked back. In a flash of lightning, through the mud-spattered rear
windshield, I saw a figure lumbering towards us on the shoulder of the road. The
sight of it made my skin crawl. It was a dark silhouette of a huge guy, like a
football player. He seemed to be holding a blanket over his head. His top half
was bulky and fuzzy. His upraised hands made it look like he had horns.
I swallowed hard. ‘Who is –’
‘Percy,’ my mother said, deadly serious. ‘Get out of the car.’
My mother threw herself against the driver’s-side door. It was jammed shut in
the mud. I tried mine. Stuck too. I looked up desperately at the hole in the roof.
It might’ve been an exit, but the edges were sizzling and smoking.
‘Climb out the passenger’s side!’ my mother told me. ‘Percy – you have to
run. Do you see that big tree?’
‘What?’
Another flash of lightning, and through the smoking hole in the roof I saw the
tree she meant: a huge, White House Christmas-tree-sized pine at the crest of the
nearest hill.
‘That’s the property line,’ my mom said. ‘Get over that hill and you’ll see a
big farmhouse down in the valley. Run and don’t look back. Yell for help. Don’t
stop until you reach the door.’
‘Mom, you’re coming, too.’
Her face was pale, her eyes as sad as when she looked at the ocean.
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘You are coming with me. Help me carry Grover.’
‘Food!’ Grover moaned, a little louder.
The man with the blanket on his head kept coming towards us, making his
grunting, snorting noises. As he got closer, I realized he couldn’t be holding a
blanket over his head, because his hands – huge meaty hands – were swinging at
his sides. There was no blanket. Meaning the bulky, fuzzy mass that was too big
to be his head… was his head. And the points that looked like horns…
‘He doesn’t want us,’ my mother told me. ‘He wants you. Besides, I can’t
cross the property line.’
‘But…’
‘We don’t have time, Percy. Go. Please.’
I got mad, then – mad at my mother, at Grover the goat, at the thing with
horns that was lumbering towards us slowly and deliberately like, like a bull.
I climbed across Grover and pushed the door open into the rain. ‘We’re going
together. Come on, Mom.’
‘I told you –’
‘Mom! I am not leaving you. Help me with Grover.’
I didn’t wait for her answer. I scrambled outside, dragging Grover from the
car. He was surprisingly light, but I couldn’t have carried him very far if my
mom hadn’t come to my aid.
Together, we draped Grover’s arms over our shoulders and started stumbling
uphill through wet waist-high grass.
Glancing back, I got my first clear look at the monster. He was seven feet tall,
easy, his arms and legs like something from the cover of Muscle Man magazine
– bulging biceps and triceps and a bunch of other ‘ceps, all stuffed like baseballs
under vein-webbed skin. He wore no clothes except underwear – I mean, bright
white Fruit-of-the-Looms, which would’ve been funny except for the top half of
his body. Coarse brown hair started at about his bellybutton and got thicker as it
reached his shoulders.
His neck was a mass of muscle and fur leading up to his enormous head,
which had a snout as long as my arm, snotty nostrils with a gleaming brass ring,
cruel black eyes, and horns – enormous black-and-white horns with points you
just couldn’t get from an electric sharpener.
I recognized the monster, all right. He had been in one of the first stories Mr
Brunner told us. But he couldn’t be real.
I blinked the rain out of my eyes. ‘That’s –’
‘Pasiphae’s son,’ my mother said. ‘I wish I’d known how badly they want to
kill you.’
‘But a he’s a min–’
‘Don’t say his name,’ she warned. ‘Names have power.’
The pine tree was still way too far – a hundred metres uphill at least.
I glanced behind me again.
The bull-man hunched over our car, looking in the windows – or not looking,
exactly. More like snuffling, nuzzling. I wasn’t sure why he bothered, since we
were only about fifteen metres away.
‘Food?’ Grover moaned.
‘Shhh,’ I told him. ‘Mom, what’s he doing? Doesn’t he see us?’
‘His sight and hearing are terrible,’ she said. ‘He goes by smell. But he’ll
figure out where we are soon enough.’
As if on cue, the bull-man bellowed in rage. He picked up Gabe’s Camaro by
the torn roof, the chassis creaking and groaning. He raised the car over his head
and threw it down the road. It slammed into the wet asphalt and skidded in a
shower of sparks for about half a mile before coming to a stop. The gas tank
exploded.
Not a scratch, I remembered Gabe saying.
Oops.
‘Percy,’ my mom said. ‘When he sees us, he’ll charge. Wait until the last
second, then jump out of the way – directly sideways. He can’t change direction
very well once he’s charging. Do you understand?’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I’ve been worried about an attack for a long time. I should have expected
this. I was selfish, keeping you near me.’
‘Keeping me near you? But –’
Another bellow of rage, and the bull-man started tromping uphill.
He’d smelled us.
The pine tree was only a few more metres, but the hill was getting steeper and
slicker, and Grover wasn’t getting any lighter.
The bull-man closed in. Another few seconds and he’d be on top of us.
My mother must’ve been exhausted, but she shouldered Grover. ‘Go, Percy!
Separate! Remember what I said.’
I didn’t want to split up, but I had the feeling she was right – it was our only
chance. I sprinted to the left, turned, and saw the creature bearing down on me.
His black eyes glowed with hate. He reeked like rotten meat.
He lowered his head and charged, those razor-sharp horns aimed straight at
my chest.
The fear in my stomach made me want to bolt, but that wouldn’t work. I could
never outrun this thing. So I held my ground, and at the last moment, I jumped to
the side.
The bull-man stormed past like a freight train, then bellowed with frustration
and turned, but not towards me this time, towards my mother, who was setting
Grover down in the grass.
We’d reached the crest of the hill. Down the other side I could see a valley,
just as my mother had said, and the lights of a farmhouse glowing yellow
through the rain. But that was half a mile away. We’d never make it.
The bull-man grunted, pawing the ground. He kept eyeing my mother, who
was now retreating slowly downhill, back towards the road, trying to lead the
monster away from Grover.
‘Run, Percy!’ she told me. ‘I can’t go any further. Run!’
But I just stood there, frozen in fear, as the monster charged her. She tried to
sidestep, as she’d told me to do, but the monster had learned his lesson. His hand
shot out and grabbed her by the neck as she tried to get away. He lifted her as she
struggled, kicking and pummelling the air.
‘Mom!’
She caught my eyes, managed to choke out one last word: ‘Go!’
Then, with an angry roar, the monster closed his fists around my mother’s
neck, and she dissolved before my eyes, melting into light, a shimmering golden
form, as if she were a holographic projection. A blinding flash, and she was
simply… gone.
‘No!’
Anger replaced my fear. Newfound strength burned in my limbs – the same
rush of energy I’d got when Mrs Dodds grew talons.
The bull-man bore down on Grover, who lay helpless in the grass. The
monster hunched over, snuffling my best friend, as if he were about to lift
Grover up and make him dissolve too.
I couldn’t allow that.
I stripped off my red rain jacket.
‘HEY!’ I screamed, waving the jacket, running to one side of the monster.
‘Hey, stupid! Ground beef!’
‘Raaaarrrrr!’ The monster turned towards me, shaking his meaty fists.
I had an idea – a stupid idea, but better than no idea at all. I put my back to the
big pine tree and waved my red jacket in front of the bull-man, thinking I’d jump
out of the way at the last moment.
But it didn’t happen like that.
The bull-man charged too fast, his arms out to grab me whichever way I tried
to dodge.
Time slowed down.
My legs tensed. I couldn’t jump sideways, so I leaped straight up, kicking off
from the creature’s head, using it as a springboard, turning in midair and landing
on his neck.
How did I do that? I didn’t have time to figure it out. A millisecond later, the
monster’s head slammed into the tree and the impact nearly knocked my teeth
out.
The bull-man staggered around, trying to shake me. I locked my arms around
his horns to keep from being thrown. Thunder and lightning were still going
strong. The rain was in my eyes. The smell of rotten meat burned my nostrils.
The monster shook himself around and bucked like a rodeo bull. He should
have just backed up into the tree and smashed me flat, but I was starting to
realize that this thing had only one gear: forward.
Meanwhile, Grover started groaning in the grass. I wanted to yell at him to
shut up, but the way I was getting tossed around, if I opened my mouth I’d bite
my own tongue off.
‘Food!’ Grover moaned.
The bull-man wheeled towards him, pawed the ground again, and got ready to
charge. I thought about how he had squeezed the life out of my mother, made her
disappear in a flash of light, and rage filled me like high-octane fuel. I got both
hands around one horn and I pulled backwards with all my might. The monster
tensed, gave a surprised grunt, then – snap!
The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back
in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was
blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife.
The monster charged.
Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster
barrelled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his
furry rib cage.
The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to
disintegrate – not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling
sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs Dodds had burst
apart.
The monster was gone.
The rain had stopped. The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I
smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was
splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I’d just seen my
mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my
help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, towards the
lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to
Grover – I wasn’t going to let him go.
The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a
ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light and the stern
faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and a pretty girl, her blonde hair curled
like Cinderella’s. They both looked down at me, and the girl said, ‘He’s the one.
He must be.’
‘Silence, Annabeth,’ the man said. ‘He’s still conscious. Bring him inside.’
5
I Play Pinochle with a Horse
I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me.
The rest wanted food.
I must’ve woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so
I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed
something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The girl with
curly blonde hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin
with the spoon.
When she saw my eyes open, she asked, ‘What will happen at the summer
solstice?’
I managed to croak, ‘What?’
She looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. ‘What’s going on?
What was stolen? We’ve only got a few weeks!’
‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled, ‘I don’t…’
Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with
pudding.
The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.
A husky blond dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping
watch over me. He had blue eyes – at least a dozen of them – on his cheeks, his
forehead, the backs of his hands.
***
When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my
surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a
deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the
distance. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my
legs, a pillow behind my neck. All that was great, but my mouth felt like a
scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every
one of my teeth hurt.
On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a
green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.
My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around
it.
‘Careful,’ a familiar voice said.
Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn’t slept in a
week. Under one arm, he cradled a shoe box. He was wearing blue jeans,
Converse hi-tops and a bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD.
Just plain old Grover. Not the goat boy.
So maybe I’d had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on
vacation, and we’d stopped here at this big house for some reason. And…
‘You saved my life,’ Grover said. ‘I… well, the least I could do… I went back
to the hill. I thought you might want this.’
Reverently, he placed the shoe box in my lap.
Inside was a black-and-white bulls horn, the base jagged from being broken
off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn’t been a nightmare.
‘The Minotaur,’ said.
‘Um, Percy, it isn’t a good idea –’
‘That’s what they call it in the Greek myths, isn’t it?’ I demanded. ‘The
Minotaur. Half man, half bull.’
Grover shifted uncomfortably. ‘You’ve been out for two days. How much do
you remember?’
‘My mom. Is she really…’
He looked down.
I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream,
acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded
by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the
huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.
My mother was gone. The whole world should be black and cold. Nothing
should look beautiful.
‘I’m sorry,’ Grover sniffled. ‘I’m a failure. I’m – I’m the worst satyr in the
world.’
He moaned, stomping his foot so hard it came off. I mean, the Converse hi-top
came off. The inside was filled with Styrofoam, except for a hoof-shaped hole.
‘Oh, Styx!’ he mumbled.
Thunder rolled across the clear sky.
As he struggled to get his hoof back in the fake foot, I thought, Well, that
settles it.
Grover was a satyr. I was ready to bet that if I shaved his curly brown hair, I’d
find tiny horns on his head. But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or
even Minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into
nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.
I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with… Smelly Gabe? No. That
would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was
seventeen and join the army. I’d do something.
Grover was still sniffling. The poor kid – poor goat, satyr, whatever – looked
as if he expected to be hit.
I said, ‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you.’
‘Did my mother ask you to protect me?’
‘No. But that’s my job. I’m a keeper. At least… I was.’
‘But why…’ I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.
‘Don’t strain yourself,’ Grover said. ‘Here.’
He helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.
I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn’t that at all.
It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies – my
mom’s homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips
still melting. Drinking it, my whole body felt warm and good, full of energy. My
grief didn’t go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against
my cheek, given me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me
everything was going to be okay.
Before I knew it, I’d drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I’d just had a warm
drink, but the ice cubes hadn’t even melted.
‘Was it good?’ Grover asked.
I nodded.
‘What did it taste like?’ He sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I should’ve let you taste.’
His eyes got wide. ‘No! That’s not what I meant. I just… wondered.’
‘Chocolate-chip cookies,’ I said. ‘My mom’s. Homemade.’
He sighed. ‘And how do you feel?’
‘Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred metres.’
‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘That’s good. I don’t think you should risk drinking any
more of that stuff.’
‘What do you mean?’
He took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it
back on the table. ‘Come on. Chiron and Mr D are waiting.’
The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.
My legs felt wobbly trying to walk that far. Grover offered to carry the
Minotaur horn, but I held on to it. I’d paid for that souvenir the hard way. I
wasn’t going to let it go.
As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.
We must’ve been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of
the house, the valley marched all the way up to Long Island Sound, which
glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn’t
process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that
looked like ancient Greek architecture – an open-air pavilion, an amphitheatre, a
circular arena – except that they all looked brand new, their white marble
columns sparkling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-age kids
and satyrs played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright
orange T-shirts like Grover’s were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins
nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses
down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had
wings.
Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card
table. The blonde-haired girl who’d spoon-fed me popcorn-flavoured pudding
was leaning on the porch rail next to them.
The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes
and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of
baby angels – what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That’s it. He looked
like a cherub who’d turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern
Hawaiian shirt, and he would’ve fitted right in at one of Gabe’s poker parties,
except I got the feeling this guy could’ve out-gambled even my stepfather.
‘That’s Mr D,’ Grover murmured to me. ‘He’s the camp director. Be polite.
The girl, that’s Annabeth Chase. She’s just a camper, but she’s been here longer
than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron…’
He pointed at the guy whose back was to me.
First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed
jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.
‘Mr Brunner!’ I cried.
The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous
glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the
multiple choice answers B.
‘Ah, good, Percy,’ he said. ‘Now we have four for pinochle.’
He offered me a chair to the right of Mr D, who looked at me with bloodshot
eyes and heaved a great sigh. ‘Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp
Half-Blood. There. Now don’t expect me to be glad to see you.’
‘Uh, thanks.’ I scooted a little further away from him because, if there was one
thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult has
been hitting the happy juice. If Mr D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.
‘Annabeth?’ Mr Brunner called to the blonde girl.
She came forward and Mr Brunner introduced us. ‘This young lady nursed
you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don’t you go check on
Percy’s bunk? We’ll be putting him in cabin eleven for now.’
Annabeth said, ‘Sure, Chiron.’
She was probably my age, maybe a couple of centimetres taller, and a whole
lot more athletic-looking. With her deep tan and her curly blonde hair, she was
almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like,
except her eyes ruined the image. They were a startling grey, like storm clouds;
pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analysing the best way to take me
down in a fight.
She glanced at the Minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined
she was going to say, You killed a Minotaur! or Wow, you’re so awesome! or
something like that.
Instead she said, ‘You drool when you sleep.’
Then she sprinted off down the lawn, her blonde hair flying behind her.
‘So,’ I said, anxious to change the subject. ‘You, uh, work here, Mr Brunner?’
‘Not Mr Brunner,’ the ex-Mr Brunner said. ‘I’m afraid that was a pseudonym.
You may call me Chiron.’
‘Okay.’ Totally confused, I looked at the director. ‘And Mr D… does that
stand for something?’
Mr D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I’d just belched
loudly. ‘Young man, names are powerful things. You don’t just go around using
them for no reason.’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
‘I must say, Percy,’ Chiron-Brunner broke in, ‘I’m glad to see you alive. It’s
been a long time since I’ve made a house call to a potential camper. I’d hate to
think I’ve wasted my time.’
‘House call?’
‘My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools,
of course, keeping a lookout. But Grover alerted me as soon as he met you. He
sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced
the other Latin teacher to… ah, take a leave of absence.’
I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long
ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first
week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr Brunner
had taken the class.
‘You came to Yancy just to teach me?’ I asked.
Chiron nodded. ‘Honestly, I wasn’t sure about you at first. We contacted your
mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for
Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it
here alive, and that’s always the first test.’
‘Grover,’ Mr D said impatiently, ‘are you playing or not?’
‘Yes, sir!’ Grover trembled as he took the fourth chair, though I didn’t know
why he should be so afraid of a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.
‘You do know how to play pinochle?’ Mr D eyed me suspiciously.
‘I’m afraid not,’ I said.
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ he said.
‘Sir,’ I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.
‘Well,’ he told me, ‘it is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the
greatest games ever invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young men
to know the rules.’
‘I’m sure the boy can learn,’ Chiron said.
‘Please,’ I said, ‘what is this place? What am I doing here? Mr Brun – Chiron
– why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?’
Mr D snorted. ‘I asked the same question.’
The camp director dealt the cards. Grover flinched every time one landed in
his pile.
Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to
let me know that no matter what my average was, I was his star student. He
expected me to have the right answer.
‘Percy,’ he said. ‘Did your mother tell you nothing?’
‘She said…’ I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. ‘She told
me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to.
She said that once I was here, I probably couldn’t leave. She wanted to keep me
close to her.’
‘Typical,’ Mr D said. ‘That’s how they usually get killed. Young man, are you
bidding or not?’
‘What?’ I asked.
He explained, impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.
‘I’m afraid there’s too much to tell,’ Chiron said. ‘I’m afraid our usual
orientation film won’t be sufficient.’
‘Orientation film?’ I asked.
‘No,’ Chiron decided. ‘Well, Percy. You know your friend Grover is a satyr.
You know –’ he pointed to the horn in the shoebox – ‘that you have killed a
Minotaur. No small feat, either, lad. What you may not know is that great powers
are at work in your life. Gods – the forces you call the Greek gods – are very
much alive.’
I stared at the others around the table.
I waited for somebody to yell, Not! But all I got was Mr D yelling, ‘Oh, a
royal marriage. Trick! Trick!’ He cackled as he tallied up his points.
‘Mr D,’ Grover asked timidly, ‘if you’re not going to eat it, could I have your
Diet Coke can?’
‘Eh? Oh, all right.’
Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminium can and chewed it
mournfully.
‘Wait,’ I told Chiron. ‘You’re telling me there’s such a thing as God.’
‘Well, now,’ Chiron said. ‘God – capital G, God. That’s a different matter
altogether. We shan’t deal with the metaphysical.’
‘Metaphysical? But you were just talking about –’
‘Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and
human endeavours: the immortal gods of Olympus. That’s a smaller matter.’
‘Smaller!’
‘Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class.’
‘Zeus,’ I said. ‘Hera. Apollo. You mean them.’
And there it was again – distant thunder on a cloudless day.
‘Young man,’ said Mr D. ‘I would really be less casual about throwing those
names around, if I were you.’
‘But they’re stories,’ I said. ‘They’re – myths, to explain lightning and the
seasons and stuff. They’re what people believed before there was science.’
‘Science!’ Mr D scoffed. ‘And tell me, Perseus Jackson –’
I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody.
‘– what will people think of your “science” two thousand years from now?’
Mr D continued. ‘Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That’s what.
Oh, I love mortals – they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think
they’ve come so˜o˜o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this boy and tell me.’
I wasn’t liking Mr D much, but there was something about the way he called
me mortal, as if… he wasn’t. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to
suggest why Grover was dutifully minding his cards, chewing his soda can, and
keeping his mouth shut.
‘Percy,’ Chiron said, ‘you may choose to believe or not, but the fact is that
immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying?
Never fading? Existing, just as you are, for all time?’
I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty
good deal, but the tone of Chiron’s voice made me hesitate.
‘You mean, whether people believed in you or not,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Chiron agreed. ‘If you were a god, how would you like being called
a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Perseus Jackson,
that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little
boys can get over losing their mothers?’
My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I
wasn’t going to let him. I said, ‘I wouldn’t like it. But I don’t believe in gods.’
‘Oh, you’d better,’ Mr D murmured. ‘Before one of them incinerates you.’
Grover said, ‘P-please, sir. He’s just lost his mother. He’s in shock.’
‘A lucky thing, too,’ Mr D grumbled, playing a card. ‘Bad enough I’m
confined to this miserable job, working with boys who don’t even believe!’
He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had
bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red
wine.
My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked up.
‘Mr D,’ he warned, ‘your restrictions.’
Mr D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.
‘Dear me.’ He looked at the sky and yelled, ‘Old habits! Sorry!’
More thunder.
Mr D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of
Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to
his card game.
Chiron winked at me. ‘Mr D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to
a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits.’
‘A wood nymph,’ I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from
outer space.
‘Yes,’ Mr D confessed. ‘Father loves to punish me. The first time, Prohibition.
Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time – well, she really was
pretty, and I couldn’t stay away – the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood
Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. “Be a better influence,” he told me.
“Work with youths rather than tearing them down.” Ha! Absolutely unfair.’
Mr D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.
‘And…’ I stammered, ‘your father is…’
‘Di immortales, Chiron,’ Mr D said. ‘I thought you taught this boy the basics.
My father is Zeus, of course.’
I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. The
satyrs that all seemed to work here. The way Grover cringed, as if Mr D were his
master.
‘You’re Dionysus,’ I said. ‘The god of wine.’
Mr D rolled his eyes. ‘What do they say, these days, Grover? Do the children
say, “Well, duh!”?’
‘Y-yes, Mr D.’
‘Then, “Well, duh!” Percy Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?’
‘You’re a god.’
‘Yes, child.’
‘A god. You.’
He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his
eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit
of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death,
drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned
to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed
him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain
that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my
life.
‘Would you like to test me, child?’ he said quietly.
‘No. No, sir.’
The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. ‘I believe I win.’
‘Not quite, Mr D,’ Chiron said. He set down a straight, tallied the points, and
said, ‘The game goes to me.’
I thought Mr D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but
he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin
teacher. He got up, and Grover rose, too.
‘I’m tired,’ Mr D said. ‘I believe I’ll take a nap before the sing-along tonight.
But first, Grover, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect
performance on this assignment.’
Grover’s face beaded with sweat. ‘Y-yes, sir.’
Mr D turned to me. ‘Cabin eleven, Percy Jackson. And mind your manners.’
He swept into the farmhouse, Grover following miserably.
‘Will Grover be okay?’ I asked Chiron.
Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. ‘Old Dionysus isn’t really
mad. He just hates his job. He’s been… ah, grounded, I guess you would say,
and he can’t stand waiting another century before he’s allowed to go back to
Olympus.’
‘Mount Olympus,’ I said. ‘You’re telling me there really is a palace there?’
‘Well now, there’s Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there’s the home of
the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on
Mount Olympus. It’s still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways,
but the palace moves, Percy, just as the gods do.’
‘You mean the Greek gods are here? Like… in America?’
‘Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West.’
‘The what?’
‘Come now, Percy. What you call “Western civilization”. Do you think it’s
just an abstract concept? No, it’s a living force. A collective consciousness that
has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even
say they are the source of it, or at least, they are tied so tightly to it that they
couldn’t possibly fade, not unless all of Western civilization were obliterated.
The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know – or as I hope you know,
since you passed my course – the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the
gods. Oh, different names, perhaps – Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and
so on – but the same forces, the same gods.’
‘And then they died.’
‘Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France,
to Spain, for a while. Wherever the flame was brightest, the gods were there.
They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the
architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they’ve ruled, for the
last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most
important buildings. And yes, Percy, of course they are now in your United
States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus
in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in
Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not
prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not – and believe me, plenty
of people weren’t very fond of Rome, either – America is now the heart of the
flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are
here.’
It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in
Chiron’s we, as if I were part of some club.
‘Who are you, Chiron? Who… who am I?’
Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his
wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralysed from the waist
down.
‘Who are you,’ he mused. ‘Well, that’s the question we all want answered,
isn’t it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be
new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there
will be toasted marshmallows at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore them.’
And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about
the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn’t move.
His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was
wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair,
taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn’t underwear; it
was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the
wheelchair wasn’t a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on
wheels, and it must’ve been magic, because there’s no way it could’ve held all of
him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then
another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a
metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.
I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white
stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher,
smoothly grafted to the horse’s trunk.
‘What a relief the centaur said. ‘I’d been cooped up in there so long, my
fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let’s meet the other
campers.’
6
I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom
Once I got over the fact that my Latin teacher was a horse, we had a nice tour,
though I was careful not to walk behind him. I’d done pooper-scooper patrol in
the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a few times, and, I’m sorry, I did not trust
Chiron’s back end the way I trusted his front.
We passed the volleyball pit. Several of the campers nudged each other. One
pointed to the Minotaur horn I was carrying. Another said, ‘That’s him.’
Most of the campers were older than me. Their satyr friends were bigger than
Grover, all of them trotting around in orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts,
with nothing else to cover their bare shaggy hindquarters. I wasn’t normally shy,
but the way they stared at me made me uncomfortable. I felt like they were
expecting me to do a cartwheel or something.
I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I’d realized – four
storeys tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upmarket seaside resort. I was
checking out the brass eagle weather vane on top when something caught my
eye, a shadow in the uppermost window of the attic gable. Something had
moved the curtain, just for a second, and I got the distinct impression I was
being watched.
‘What’s up there?’ I asked Chiron.
He looked where I was pointing, and his smile faded. ‘Just the attic.’
‘Somebody lives there?’
‘No,’ he said with finality. ‘Not a single living thing.’
I got the feeling he was being truthful. But I was also sure something had
moved that curtain.
‘Come along, Percy,’ Chiron said, his lighthearted tone now a little forced.
‘Lots to see.’
We walked through the strawberry fields, where campers were picking bushels
of berries while a satyr played a tune on a reed pipe.
Chiron told me the camp grew a nice crop for export to New York restaurants
and Mount Olympus. ‘It pays our expenses,’ he explained. ‘And the strawberries
take almost no effort.’
He said Mr D had this effect on fruit-bearing plants: they just went crazy
when he was around. It worked best with wine grapes, but Mr D was restricted
from growing those, so they grew strawberries instead.
I watched the satyr playing his pipe. His music was causing lines of bugs to
leave the strawberry patch in every direction, like refugees fleeing a fire. I
wondered if Grover could work that kind of magic with music. I wondered if he
was still inside the farmhouse, being lectured by Mr D.
‘Grover won’t get in too much trouble, will he?’ I asked Chiron. ‘I mean… he
was a good protector. Really.’
Chiron sighed. He shed his tweed jacket and draped it over his horse’s back
like a saddle. ‘Grover has big dreams, Percy. Perhaps bigger than are reasonable.
To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a
keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill.’
‘But he did that!’
‘I might agree with you,’ Chiron said. ‘But it is not my place to judge.
Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I’m afraid they might
not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York.
Then there’s the unfortunate… ah… fate of your mother. And the fact that
Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The
council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover’s part.’
I wanted to protest. None of what had happened was Grover’s fault. I also felt
really, really guilty. If I hadn’t given Grover the slip at the bus station, he might
not have got in trouble.
‘He’ll get a second chance, won’t he?’
Chiron winced. ‘I’m afraid that was Grover’s second chance, Percy. The
council was not anxious to give him another, either, after what happened the first
time, five years ago. Olympus knows, I advised him to wait longer before trying
again. He’s still so small for his age…’
‘How old is he?’
‘Oh, twenty-eight.’
‘What! And he’s in sixth grade?’
‘Satyrs mature half as fast as humans, Percy. Grover has been the equivalent
of a middle school student for the past six years.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘Quite,’ Chiron agreed. ‘At any rate, Grover is a late bloomer, even by satyr
standards, and not yet very accomplished at woodland magic. Alas, he was
anxious to pursue his dream. Perhaps now he will find some other career…’
‘That’s not fair,’ I said. ‘What happened the first time? Was it really so bad?’
Chiron looked away quickly. ‘Let’s move along, shall we?’
But I wasn’t quite ready to let the subject drop. Something had occurred to me
when Chiron talked about my mother’s fate, as if he were intentionally avoiding
the word death. The beginnings of an idea – a tiny, hopeful fire – started forming
in my mind.
‘Chiron,’ I said. ‘If the gods and Olympus and all that are real…’
‘Yes, child?’
‘Does that mean the Underworld is real, too?’
Chiron’s expression darkened.
‘Yes, child.’ He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. ‘There is a place
where spirits go after death. But for now… until we know more… I would urge
you to put that out of your mind.’
‘What do you mean, “until we know more”?’
‘Come, Percy. Let’s see the woods.’
As we got closer, I realized how huge the forest was. It took up at least a quarter
of the valley, with trees so tall and thick, you could imagine nobody had been in
there since the Native Americans.
Chiron said, ‘The woods are stocked, if you care to try your luck, but go
armed.’
‘Stocked with what?’ I asked. ‘Armed with what?’
‘You’ll see. Capture the flag is Friday night. Do you have your own sword and
shield?’
‘My own –’
‘No,’ Chiron said. ‘I don’t suppose you do. I think a size five will do. I’ll visit
the armoury later.’
I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armoury, but there was too
much else to think about, so the tour continued. We saw the archery range, the
canoeing lake, the stables (which Chiron didn’t seem to like very much), the
javelin range, the sing-along amphitheatre, and the arena where Chiron said they
held sword and spear fights.
‘Sword and spear fights?’ I asked.
‘Cabin challenges and all that,’ he explained. ‘Not lethal. Usually. Oh, yes,
and there’s the mess hall.’
Chiron pointed to an outdoor pavilion framed in white Grecian columns on a
hill overlooking the sea. There were a dozen stone picnic tables. No roof. No
walls.
‘What do you do when it rains?’ I asked.
Chiron looked at me as if I’d gone a little weird. ‘We still have to eat, don’t
we?’ I decided to drop the subject.
Finally, he showed me the cabins. There were twelve of them, nestled in the
woods by the lake. They were arranged in a U, with two at the base and five in a
row on either side. And they were without doubt the most bizarre collection of
buildings I’d ever seen.
Except for the fact that each had a large brass number above the door (odds on
the left side, evens on the right), they looked absolutely nothing alike. Number
nine had smokestacks like a tiny factory. Number four had tomato vines on the
walls and a roof made out of real grass. Seven seemed to be made of solid gold,
which gleamed so much in the sunlight it was almost impossible to look at. They
all faced a commons area about the size of a soccer field, dotted with Greek
statues, fountains, flower beds, and a couple of basketball hoops (which were
more my speed).
In the centre of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it was a
warm afternoon, the hearth smouldered. A girl about nine years old was tending
the flames, poking the coals with a stick.
The pair of cabins at the head of the field, numbers one and two, looked like
his-and-hers mausoleums, big white marble boxes with heavy columns in front.
Cabin one was the biggest and bulkiest of the twelve. Its polished bronze doors
shimmered like a holograph, so that from different angles lightning bolts seemed
to streak across them. Cabin two was more graceful somehow, with slimmer
columns garlanded with pomegranates and flowers. The walls were carved with
images of peacocks.
‘Zeus and Hera?’ I guessed.
‘Correct,’ Chiron said.
‘Their cabins look empty.’
‘Several of the cabins are. That’s true. No one ever stays in one or two.’
Okay. So each cabin had a different god, like a mascot. Twelve cabins for the
twelve Olympians. But why would some be empty?
I stopped in front of the first cabin on the left, cabin three.
It wasn’t high and mighty like cabin one, but long and low and solid. The
outer walls were of rough grey stone studded with pieces of seashell and coral,
as if the slabs had been hewn straight from the bottom of the ocean floor. I
peeked inside the open doorway and Chiron said, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that!’
Before he could pull me back, I caught the salty scent of the interior, like the
wind on the shore at Montauk. The interior walls glowed like abalone. There
were six empty bunk beds with silk sheets turned down. But there was no sign
anyone had ever slept there. The place felt so sad and lonely, I was glad when
Chiron put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Come along, Percy.’
Most of the other cabins were crowded with campers.
Number five was bright red – a real nasty paint job, as if the colour had been
splashed on with buckets and fists. The roof was lined with barbed wire. A
stuffed wild boar’s head hung over the doorway, and its eyes seemed to follow
me. Inside I could see a bunch of mean-looking kids, both girls and boys, arm
wrestling and arguing with each other while rock music blared. The loudest was
a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen. She wore a size XXXL Camp Half-Blood Tshirt under a camouflage jacket. She zeroed in on me and gave me an evil sneer.
She reminded me of Nancy Bobofit, though the camper girl was much bigger
and tougher looking, and her hair was long and stringy, and brown instead of
red.
I kept walking, trying to stay clear of Chiron’s hooves. ‘We haven’t seen any
other centaurs,’ I observed.
‘No,’ said Chiron sadly. ‘My kinsmen are a wild and barbaric folk, I’m afraid.
You might encounter them in the wilderness, or at major sporting events. But
you won’t see any here.’
‘You said your name was Chiron. Are you really…’
He smiled down at me. ‘The Chiron from the stories? Trainer of Hercules and
all that? Yes, Percy, I am.’
‘But, shouldn’t you be dead?’
Chiron paused, as if the question intrigued him. ‘I honestly don’t know about
should be. The truth is, I can’t be dead. You see, aeons ago the gods granted my
wish. I could continue the work I loved. I could be a teacher of heroes as long as
humanity needed me. I gained much from that wish… and I gave up much. But
I’m still here, so I can only assume I’m still needed.’
I thought about being a teacher for three thousand years. It wouldn’t have
made my Top Ten Things to Wish For list.
‘Doesn’t it ever get boring?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Horribly depressing, at times, but never boring.’
‘Why depressing?’
Chiron seemed to turn hard of hearing again.
‘Oh, look,’ he said. ‘Annabeth is waiting for us.’
***
The blonde girl I’d met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last
cabin on the left, number eleven.
When we reached her, she looked me over critically, like she was still thinking
about how much I drooled.
I tried to see what she was reading, but I couldn’t make out the title. I thought
my dyslexia was acting up. Then I realized the title wasn’t even English. The
letters looked Greek to me. I mean, literally Greek. There were pictures of
temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture
book.
‘Annabeth,’ Chiron said, ‘I have masters’ archery class at noon. Would you
take Percy from here?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Cabin eleven,’ Chiron told me, gesturing towards the doorway. ‘Make
yourself at home.’
Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp
cabin, with the emphasis on old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint
peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor’s symbols, a winged pole
with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it…? A caduceus.
Inside, it was packed with people, both boys and girls, way more than the
number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over on the floor. It looked
like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation centre.
Chiron didn’t go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw
him they all stood and bowed respectfully.
‘Well, then,’ Chiron said. ‘Good luck, Percy. I‘ll see you at dinner.’
He galloped away towards the archery range.
I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren’t bowing any more.
They were staring at me, sizing me up. I knew this routine. I’d gone through it at
enough schools.
‘Well?’ Annabeth prompted. ‘Go on.’
So naturally I tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of myself.
There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.
Annabeth announced, ‘Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven.’
‘Regular or undetermined?’ somebody asked.
I didn’t know what to say, but Annabeth said, ‘Undetermined.’
Everybody groaned.
A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. ‘Now, now, campers.
That’s what we’re here for. Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor,
right over there.’
The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and
muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange
tank top, cutoffs, sandals and a leather necklace with five different-coloured clay
beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that
ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.
‘This is Luke,’ Annabeth said, and her voice sounded different somehow. I
glanced over and could’ve sworn she was blushing. She saw me looking, and her
expression hardened again. ‘He’s your counsellor for now.’
‘For now?’ I asked.
‘You’re undetermined,’ Luke explained patiently. ‘They don’t know what
cabin to put you in, so you’re here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all
visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travellers.’
I looked at the tiny section of floor they’d given me. I had nothing to put there
to mark it as my own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the
Minotaur’s horn. I thought about setting that down, but then I remembered that
Hermes was also the god of thieves.
I looked around at the campers’ faces, some sullen and suspicious, some
grinning stupidly, some eyeing me as if they were waiting for a chance to pick
my pockets.
‘How long will I be here?’ I asked.
‘Good question,’ Luke said. ‘Until you’re determined.’
‘How long will that take?’
The campers all laughed.
‘Come on,’ Annabeth told me. ‘I’ll show you the volleyball court.’
‘I’ve already seen it.’
‘Come on.’
She grabbed my wrist and dragged me outside. I could hear the kids of cabin
eleven laughing behind me.
When we were a few metres away, Annabeth said, ‘Jackson, you have to do
better than that.’
‘What?’
She rolled her eyes and mumbled under her breath, ‘I can’t believe I thought
you were the one.’
‘What’s your problem?’ I was getting angry now. ‘All I know is, I kill some
bull guy –’
‘Don’t talk like that!’ Annabeth told me. ‘You know how many kids at this
camp wish they’d had your chance?’
‘To get killed?’
‘To fight the Minotaur! What do you think we train for?’
I shook my head. ‘Look, if the thing I fought really was the Minotaur, the
same one in the stories…’
‘Yes.’
‘Then there’s only one.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he died, like, a gajillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the
labyrinth. So…’
‘Monsters don’t die, Percy. They can be killed. But they don’t die.’
‘Oh, thanks. That clears it up.’
‘They don’t have souls, like you and me. You can dispel them for a while,
maybe even for a whole lifetime if you’re lucky. But they are primal forces.
Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they re-form.’
I thought about Mrs Dodds. ‘You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a
sword –’
‘The Fu… I mean, your maths teacher. That’s right. She’s still out there. You
just made her very, very mad.’
‘How did you know about Mrs Dodds?’
‘You talk in your sleep.’
‘You almost called her something. A Fury? They’re Hades’ torturers, right?’
Annabeth glanced nervously at the ground, as if she expected it to open up
and swallow her. ‘You shouldn’t call them by name, even here. We call them the
Kindly Ones, if we have to speak of them at all.’
‘Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?’ I sounded whiny,
even to myself, but right then I didn’t care. ‘Why do I have to stay in cabin
eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of
empty bunks right over there.’
I pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. ‘You don’t just
choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or… your parent.’
She stared at me, waiting for me to get it.
‘My mom is Sally Jackson,’ I said. ‘She works at the candy store in Grand
Central Station. At least, she used to.’
‘I’m sorry about your mom, Percy. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking
about your other parent. Your dad.’
‘He’s dead. I never knew him.’
Annabeth sighed. Clearly, she’d had this conversation before with other kids.
‘Your father’s not dead, Percy.’
‘How can you say that? You know him?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Then how can you say –’
‘Because I know you. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t one of us.’
‘You don’t know anything about me.’
‘No?’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘I bet you moved around from school to school.
I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them.’
‘How –’
‘Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too.’
I tried to swallow my embarrassment. ‘What does that have to do with
anything?’
‘Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you
read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the
ADHD – you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield
reflexes. In a real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems,
that’s because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than
a regular mortal’s. Of course the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are
monsters. They don’t want you seeing them for what they are.’
‘You sound like… you went through the same thing?’
‘Most of the kids here did. If you weren’t like us, you couldn’t have survived
the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar.’
‘Ambrosia and nectar.’
‘The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff
would’ve killed a normal kid. It would’ve turned your blood to fire and your
bones to sand and you’d be dead. Face it. You’re a half-blood.’
A half-blood.
I was reeling with so many questions I didn’t know where to start.
Then a husky voice yelled, ‘Well! A newbie!’
I looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering towards us.
She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean-looking like her,
all wearing camo jackets.
‘Clarisse,’ Annabeth sighed. ‘Why don’t you go polish your spear or
something?’
‘Sure, Miss Princess,’ the big girl said. ‘So I can run you through with it
Friday night.’
‘Errete es korakas,’ Annabeth said, which I somehow understood was Greek
for “Go to the crows”, though I had a feeling it was a worse curse than it
sounded. ‘You don’t stand a chance.’
‘We’ll pulverize you,’ Clarisse said, but her eye twitched. Perhaps she wasn’t
sure she could follow through on the threat. She turned towards me. ‘Who’s this
little runt?’
‘Percy Jackson,’ Annabeth said, ‘meet Clarisse, Daughter of Ares.’
I blinked. ‘Like… the war god?’
Clarisse sneered. ‘You got a problem with that?’
‘No,’ I said, recovering my wits. ‘It explains the bad smell.’
Clarisse growled. ‘We got an initiation ceremony for newbies, Prissy.’
‘Percy.’
‘Whatever. Come on, I’ll show you.’
‘Clarisse –’ Annabeth tried to say.
‘Stay out of it, wise girl.’
Annabeth looked pained, but she did stay out of it, and I didn’t really want her
help. I was the new kid. I had to earn my own rep.
I handed Annabeth my Minotaur horn and got ready to fight, but before I
knew it, Clarisse had me by the neck and was dragging me towards a cinderblock building that I knew immediately was the bathroom.
I was kicking and punching. I’d been in plenty of fights before, but this big
girl Clarisse had hands like iron. She dragged me into the girls’ bathroom. There
was a line of toilets on one side and a line of shower stalls down the other. It
smelled just like any public bathroom, and I was thinking – as much as I could
think with Clarisse ripping my hair out – that if this place belonged to the gods,
they should’ve been able to afford classier toilets.
Clarisse’s friends were all laughing, and I was trying to find the strength I’d
used to fight the Minotaur, but it just wasn’t there.
‘Like he’s “Big Three” material,’ Clarisse said as she pushed me towards one
of the toilets. ‘Yeah, right. Minotaur probably fell over laughing, he was so
stupid-looking.’
Her friends snickered.
Annabeth stood in the corner, watching through her fingers.
Clarisse bent me over on my knees and started pushing my head towards the
toilet bowl. It reeked like rusted pipes and, well, like what goes into toilets. I
strained to keep my head up. I was looking at the scummy water thinking, I will
not go into that. I won’t.
Then something happened. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. I heard the
plumbing rumble, the pipes shudder. Clarisse’s grip on my hair loosened. Water
shot out of the toilet, making an arc straight over my head, and the next thing I
knew, I was sprawled on the bathroom tiles with Clarisse screaming behind me.
I turned just as water blasted out of the toilet again, hitting Clarisse straight in
the face so hard it pushed her down onto her butt. The water stayed on her like
the spray from a fire hose, pushing her backwards into a shower stall.
She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming towards her. But then
the other toilets exploded, too, and six more streams of toilet water blasted them
back. The showers acted up, too, and together all the fixtures sprayed the
camouflage girls right out of the bathroom, spinning them around like pieces of
garbage being washed away.
As soon as they were out the door, I felt the tug in my gut lessen, and the
water shut off as quickly as it had started.
The entire bathroom was flooded. Annabeth hadn’t been spared. She was
dripping wet, but she hadn’t been pushed out the door. She was standing in
exactly the same place, staring at me in shock.
I looked down and realized I was sitting in the only dry spot in the whole
room. There was a circle of dry floor around me. I didn’t have one drop of water
on my clothes. Nothing.
I stood up, my legs shaky.
Annabeth said, ‘How did you…’
‘I don’t know.’
We walked to the door. Outside, Clarisse and her friends were sprawled in the
mud, and a bunch of other campers had gathered around to gawk. Clarisse’s hair
was flattened across her face. Her camouflage jacket was sopping and she
smelled like sewage. She gave me a look of absolute hatred. ‘You are dead, new
boy. You are totally dead.’
I probably should have let it go, but I said, ‘You want to gargle with toilet
water again, Clarisse? Close your mouth.’
Her friends had to hold her back. They dragged her towards cabin five, while
the other campers made way to avoid her flailing feet.
Annabeth stared at me. I couldn’t tell whether she was just grossed out or
angry at me for dousing her.
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What are you thinking?’
‘I’m thinking,’ she said, ‘that I want you on my team for capture the flag.’
7
My Dinner Goes Up in Smoke
Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers
pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were
just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.
She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging
their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a
giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually
consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed
lava and clashed together if you didn’t get to the top fast enough.
Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the
cabins.
‘I’ve got training to do,’ Annabeth said flatly. ‘Dinner’s at seven thirty. Just
follow your cabin to the mess hall.’
‘Annabeth, I’m sorry about the toilets.’
‘Whatever.’
‘It wasn’t my fault.’
She looked at me sceptically, and I realized it was my fault. I’d made water
shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn’t understand how. But the toilets had
responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.
‘You need to talk to the Oracle,’ Annabeth said.
‘Who?’
‘Not who. What. The Oracle. I’ll ask Chiron.’
I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for
once.
I wasn’t expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my
heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the
base of the pier, about five metres below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering
green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as
minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost
friend.
I didn’t know what else to do. I waved back.
‘Don’t encourage them,’ Annabeth warned. ‘Naiads are terrible flirts.’
‘Naiads,’ I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. ‘That’s it. I want to go
home now.’
Annabeth frowned. ‘Don’t you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only
safe place on earth for kids like us.’
‘You mean, mentally disturbed kids?’
‘I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human.’
‘Half-human and half-what?’
‘I think you know.’
I didn’t want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a
sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.
‘God,’ I said. ‘Half-god.’
Annabeth nodded. ‘Your father isn’t dead. Percy. He’s one of the Olympians.’
‘That’s… crazy.’
‘Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran
around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think
they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?’
‘But those are just –’ I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron’s
warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. ‘But if all the
kids here are half-gods –’
‘Demigods,’ Annabeth said. ‘That’s the official term. Or half-bloods.’
‘Then who’s your dad?’
Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I’d just
trespassed on a sensitive subject.
‘My dad is a professor at West Point,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen him since I was
very small. He teaches American history.’
‘He’s human.’
‘What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female
attractive? How sexist is that?’
‘Who’s your mom, then?’
‘Cabin six.’
‘Meaning?’
Annabeth straightened. ‘Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle.’
Okay, I thought. Why not?
‘And my dad?’
‘Undetermined,’ Annabeth said, ‘like I told you before. Nobody knows.’
‘Except my mother. She knew.’
‘Maybe not, Percy. Gods don’t always reveal their identities.’
‘My dad would have. He loved her.’
Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn’t want to burst my bubble.
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe he’ll send a sign. That’s the only way to know for
sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it
happens.’
‘You mean sometimes it doesn’t?’
Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. ‘The gods are busy. They have a lot of
kids and they don’t always… Well, sometimes they don’t care about us, Percy.
They ignore us.’
I thought about some of the kids I’d seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who
looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never
come. I’d known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding
school by rich parents who didn’t have the time to deal with them. But gods
should behave better.
‘So I’m stuck here,’ I said. ‘That’s it? For the rest of my life?’
‘It depends,’ Annabeth said. ‘Some campers only stay the summer. If you’re a
child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you’re probably not a real powerful force. The
monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer
training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it’s
too dangerous to leave. We’re year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract
monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they’ll
ignore us until we’re old enough to cause trouble – about ten or eleven years old
– but after that most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off.
A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me,
if I told you the names, you’d know them. Some don’t even realize they’re
demigods. But very, very few are like that.’
‘So monsters can’t get in here?’
Annabeth shook her head. ‘Not unless they’re intentionally stocked in the
woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside.’
‘Why would anybody want to summon a monster?’
‘Practice fights. Practical jokes.’
‘Practical jokes?’
‘The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From
the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a
strawberry farm.’
‘So… you’re a year-rounder?’
Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather
necklace with five clay beads of different colours. It was just like Luke’s, except
Annabeth’s also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.
‘I’ve been here since I was seven,’ she said. ‘Every August, on the last day of
summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I’ve been here longer
than most of the counsellors, and they’re all in college.’
‘Why did you come so young?’
She twisted the ring on her necklace. ‘None of your business.’
‘Oh.’ I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. ‘So… I could just
walk out of here right now if I wanted to?’
‘It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr D’s or Chiron’s permission. But
they wouldn’t give permission until the end of the summer session unless…’
‘Unless?’
‘You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time...’
Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn’t gone
well.
‘Back in the sick room,’ I said, ‘when you were feeding me that stuff –’
‘Ambrosia.’
‘Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice.’
Annabeth’s shoulders tensed. ‘So you do know something?’
‘Well… no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking
about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we
didn’t have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?’
She clenched her fists. ‘I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but
they won’t tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major.
Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal.’
‘You’ve been to Olympus?’
‘Some of us year-rounders – Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others – we
took a field trip during winter solstice. That’s when the gods have their big
annual council.’
‘But… how did you get there?’
‘The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire
State Building, special elevator to the six-hundredth floor.’ She looked at me like
she was sure I must know this already. ‘You are a New Yorker, right?’
‘Oh, sure.’ As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the
Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.
‘Right after we visited,’ Annabeth continued, ‘the weather got weird, as if the
gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I’ve overheard satyrs talking.
The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn’t
returned by summer solstice, there’s going to be trouble. When you came, I was
hoping… I mean – Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for
Ares. And of course she’s got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from
that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something.’
I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and
mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.
‘I’ve got to get a quest,’ Annabeth muttered to herself. ‘I’m not too young. If
they would just tell me the problem…’
I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth
must’ve heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she’d catch me later. I
left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.
Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for
dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features:
sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids
that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much
attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with
my Minotaur horn.
The counsellor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too.
It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.
‘Found you a sleeping bag,’ he said. ‘And here, I stole you some toiletries
from the camp store.’
I couldn’t tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.
I said, ‘Thanks.’
‘No prob.’ Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. ‘Tough first
day?’
‘I don’t belong here,’ I said. ‘I don’t even believe in gods.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s how we all started. Once you start believing in them?
It doesn’t get any easier.’
The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty
easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.
‘So your dad is Hermes?’ I asked.
He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he
was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal.
‘Yeah. Hermes.’
‘The wing-footed messenger guy.’
‘That’s him. Messengers. Medicine. Travellers, merchants, thieves. Anybody
who uses the roads. That’s why you’re here, enjoying cabin eleven’s hospitality.
Hermes isn’t picky about who he sponsors.’
I figured Luke didn’t mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.
‘You ever meet your dad?’ I asked.
‘Once.’
I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he’d tell me. Apparently, he
didn’t. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.
Luke looked up and managed a smile. ‘Don’t worry about it, Percy. The
campers here, they’re mostly good people. After all, we’re extended family,
right? We take care of each other.’
He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because
an older guy like him – even if he was a counsellor – should’ve steered clear of
an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin.
He’d even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had
done for me all day.
I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me
all afternoon. ‘Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being “Big Three”
material. Then Annabeth… twice, she said I might be “the one”. She said I
should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?’
Luke folded his knife. ‘I hate prophecies.’
‘What do you mean?’
His face twitched around the scar. ‘Let’s just say I messed things up for
everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the
Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn’t allowed any more quests. Annabeth’s been
dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her
he already knew her fate. He’d had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn’t tell
her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn’t destined to go on a quest yet.
She had to wait until… somebody special came to the camp.’
‘Somebody special.’
‘Don’t worry about it, kid,’ Luke said. ‘Annabeth wants to think every new
camper who comes through here is the omen she’s been waiting for. Now, come
on, it’s dinnertime.’
The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a
conch shell, even though I’d never heard one before.
Luke yelled, ‘Eleven, fall in!’
The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined
up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the
other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight,
which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as
the sun went down.
We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the
meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of
the woods – and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I
saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and
come skipping up the hill.
In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen
assorted wood nymphs and naiads.
At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire
burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table,
covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but
cabin eleven’s was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench
with half my butt hanging off.
I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr D, a few satyrs and a couple of
plump blond boys who looked just like Mr D. Chiron stood to one side, the
picnic table being way too small for a centaur.
Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with
her grey eyes and honey-blonde hair.
Clarisse sat behind me at Ares’s table. She’d apparently gotten over being
hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.
Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and
everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. ‘To the gods!’
Everybody else raised their glasses. ‘To the gods!’
Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples,
strawberries, cheese, fresh bread and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but
Luke said, ‘Speak to it. Whatever you want – non-alcoholic, of course.’
I said, ‘Cherry Coke.’
The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.
Then I had an idea. ‘Blue Cherry Coke.’
The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.
I took a cautious sip. Perfect.
I drank a toast to my mother.
She’s not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She’s in the
Underworld. And if that’s a real place, then some day…
‘Here you go, Percy,’ Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.
I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody
getting up, carrying their plates towards the fire in the centre of the pavilion. I
wondered if they were going for dessert or something.
‘Come on,’ Luke told me.
As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and
dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the
warmest, most buttery roll.
Luke murmured in my ear, ‘Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell.’
‘You’re kidding.’
His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn’t help wondering why
an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.
Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red
grapes. ‘Hermes.’
I was next.
I wished I knew what god’s name to say.
Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please.
I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.
When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn’t gag.
It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and freshbaked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other
good things that shouldn’t have gone well together, but did. I could almost
believe the gods could live off that smoke.
When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals,
Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.
Mr D got up with a huge sigh. ‘Yes, I suppose I’d better say hello to all you
brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is
Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels.’
A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.
‘Personally,’ Mr D continued, ‘I couldn’t care less, but congratulations. Also, I
should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson.’
Chiron murmured something.
‘Er, Percy Jackson,’ Mr D corrected. ‘That’s right. Hurrah, and all that. Now
run along to your silly campfire. Go on.’
Everybody cheered. We all headed down towards the amphitheatre, where
Apollo’s cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate
toasted marshmallows and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn’t feel
that anyone was staring at me any more. I felt that I was home.
Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a
starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I
didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping
bag.
My fingers curled around the Minotaur horn. I thought about my mom, but I
had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was
a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.
When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.
That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.
I wish I’d known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.
8
We Capture a Flag
The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don’t
count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs and a centaur.
Each morning I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the
gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered
Annabeth was right about my dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn’t that hard for me to
read. At least, no harder than English. After a couple of mornings, I could
stumble through a few lines of Homer without too much headache.
The rest of the day, I’d rotate through outdoor activities, looking for
something I was good at. Chiron tried to teach me archery, but we found out
pretty quick I wasn’t any good with a bow and arrow. He didn’t complain, even
when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail.
Foot racing? No good either. The wood-nymph instructors left me in the dust.
They told me not to worry about it. They’d had centuries of practice running
away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a
tree.
And wrestling? Forget it. Every time I got on the mat, Clarisse would
pulverize me.
‘There’s more where that came from, punk,’ she’d mumble in my ear.
The only thing I really excelled at was canoeing, and that wasn’t the kind of
heroic skill people expected to see from the kid who had beaten the Minotaur.
I knew the senior campers and counsellors were watching me, trying to decide
who my dad was, but they weren’t having an easy time of it. I wasn’t as strong
as the Ares kids, or as good at archery as the Apollo kids. I didn’t have
Hephaestus’s skill with metalwork or – gods forbid – Dionysus’s way with vine
plants. Luke told me I might be a child of Hermes, a kind of jack-of-all-trades,
master of none. But I got the feeling he was just trying to make me feel better.
He really didn’t know what to make of me either.
Despite all that, I liked camp. I got used to the morning fog over the beach,
the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, even the weird noises of
monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part
of my meal into the fire, and try to feel some connection to my real dad. Nothing
came. Just that warm feeling I’d always had, like the memory of his smile. I tried
not to think too much about my mom, but I kept wondering: if gods and
monsters were real, if all this magical stuff was possible, surely there was some
way to save her, to bring her back…
I started to understand Luke’s bitterness and how he seemed to resent his
father, Hermes. So okay, maybe gods had important things to do. But couldn’t
they call once in a while, or thunder, or something? Dionysus could make Diet
Coke appear out of thin air. Why couldn’t my dad, whoever he was, make a
phone appear?
Thursday afternoon, three days after I’d arrived at Camp Half-Blood, I had my
first sword-fighting lesson. Everybody from cabin eleven gathered in the big
circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.
We started with basic stabbing and slashing, using some straw-stuffed
dummies in Greek armour. I guess I did okay. At least, I understood what I was
supposed to do and my reflexes were good.
The problem was, I couldn’t find a blade that felt right in my hands. Either
they were too heavy, or too light, or too long. Luke tried his best to fix me up,
but he agreed that none of the practice blades seemed to work for me.
We moved on to duelling in pairs. Luke announced he would be my partner,
since this was my first time.
‘Good luck,’ one of the campers told me. ‘Luke’s the best swordsman in the
last three hundred years.’
‘Maybe he’ll go easy on me,’ I said.
The camper snorted.
Luke showed me thrusts and parries and shield blocks the hard way. With
every swipe, I got a little more battered and bruised. ‘Keep your guard up,
Percy,’ he’d say, then whap me in the ribs with the flat of his blade. ‘No, not that
far up!’ Whap! ‘Lunge!’ Whap!‘Now, back!’ Whap!
By the time he called a break, I was soaked in sweat. Everybody swarmed the
drinks cooler. Luke poured ice water on his head, which looked like such a good
idea, I did the same.
Instantly, I felt better. Strength surged back into my arms. The sword didn’t
feel so awkward.
‘Okay, everybody circle up!’ Luke ordered. ‘If Percy doesn’t mind, I want to
give you a little demo.’
Great, I thought. Let’s all watch Percy get pounded.
The Hermes guys gathered around. They were suppressing smiles. I figured
they’d been in my shoes before and couldn’t wait to see how Luke used me for a
punching bag. He told everybody he was going to demonstrate a disarming
technique: how to twist the enemy’s blade with the flat of your own sword so
that he had no choice but to drop his weapon.
‘This is difficult,’ he stressed. ‘I’ve had it used against me. No laughing at
Percy, now. Most swordsmen have to work years to master this technique.’
He demonstrated the move on me in slow motion. Sure enough, the sword
clattered out of my hand.
‘Now in real time,’ he said, after I’d retrieved my weapon. ‘We keep sparring
until one of us pulls it off. Ready, Percy?’
I nodded, and Luke came after me. Somehow, I kept him from getting a shot
at the hilt of my sword. My senses opened up. I saw his attacks coming. I
countered. I stepped forward and tried a thrust of my own. Luke deflected it
easily, but I saw a change in his face. His eyes narrowed, and he started to press
me with more force.
The sword grew heavy in my hand. The balance wasn’t right. I knew it was
only a matter of seconds before Luke took me down, so I figured, What the
heck?
I tried the disarming manoeuvre.
My blade hit the base of Luke’s and I twisted, putting my whole weight into a
downward thrust.
Clang.
Luke’s sword rattled against the stones. The tip of my blade was a couple of
centimetres from his undefended chest.
The other campers were silent.
I lowered my sword. ‘Um, sorry.’
For a moment, Luke was too stunned to speak.
‘Sorry?’ His scarred face broke into a grin. ‘By the gods, Percy, why are you
sorry? Show me that again!’
I didn’t want to. The short burst of manic energy had completely abandoned
me. But Luke insisted.
This time, there was no contest. The moment our swords connected, Luke hit
my hilt and sent my weapon skidding across the floor.
After a long pause, somebody in the audience said, ‘Beginner’s luck?’
Luke wiped the sweat off his brow. He appraised me with an entirely new
interest. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But I wonder what Percy could do with a balanced
sword….’
Friday afternoon, I was sitting with Grover at the lake, resting from a near-death
experience on the climbing wall. Grover had scampered to the top like a
mountain goat, but the lava had almost got me. My shirt had smoking holes in it.
The hairs had been singed off my forearms.
We sat on the pier, watching the naiads do underwater basket weaving, until I
got up the nerve to ask Grover how his conversation had gone with Mr D.
His face turned a sickly shade of yellow.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Just great.’
‘So your career’s still on track?’
He glanced at me nervously. ‘Chiron t-told you I want a searcher’s licence?’
‘Well… no.’ I had no idea what a searcher’s licence was, but it didn’t seem
like the right time to ask. ‘He just said you had big plans, you know… and that
you needed credit for completing a keeper’s assignment. So did you get it?’
Grover looked down at the naiads. ‘Mr D suspended judgement. He said I
hadn’t failed or succeeded with you yet, so our fates were still tied together. If
you got a quest and I went along to protect you, and we both came back alive,
then maybe he’d consider the job complete.’
My spirits lifted. ‘Well, that’s not so bad, right?’
‘Blaa-ha-ha! He might as well have transferred me to stable-cleaning duty.
The chances of you getting a quest… and even if you did, why would you want
me along?’
‘Of course I’d want you along!’
Grover stared glumly into the water. ‘Basket weaving… Must be nice to have
a useful skill.’
I tried to reassure him that he had lots of talents, but that just made him look
more miserable. We talked about canoeing and swordplay for a while, then
debated the pros and cons of the different gods. Finally, I asked him about the
four empty cabins.
‘Number eight, the silver one, belongs to Artemis,’ he said. ‘She vowed to be
a maiden forever. So of course, no kids. The cabin is, you know, honorary. If she
didn’t have one, she’d be mad.’
‘Yeah, okay. But the other three, the ones at the end. Are those the Big
Three?’
Grover tensed. We were getting close to a touchy subject. ‘No. One of them,
number two, is Hera’s,’ he said. ‘That’s another honorary thing. She’s the
goddess of marriage, so of course she wouldn’t go around having affairs with
mortals. That’s her husband’s job. When we say the Big Three, we mean the
three powerful brothers, the sons of Kronos.’
‘Zeus, Poseidon, Hades.’
‘Right. You know. After the great battle with the Titans, they took over the
world from their dad and drew lots to decide who got what.’
‘Zeus got the sky,’ I remembered. ‘Poseidon the sea, Hades the Underworld.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘But Hades doesn’t have a cabin here.’
‘No. He doesn’t have a throne on Olympus, either. He sort of does his own
thing down in the Underworld. If he did have a cabin here…’ Grover shuddered.
‘Well, it wouldn’t be pleasant. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘But Zeus and Poseidon – they both had, like, a bazillion kids in the myths.
Why are their cabins empty?’
Grover shifted his hooves uncomfortably. ‘About sixty years ago, after World
War II, the Big Three agreed they wouldn’t sire any more heroes. Their children
were just too powerful. They were affecting the course of human events too
much, causing too much carnage. World War II, you know, that was basically a
fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon on one side, and the sons of Hades
on the other. The winning side, Zeus and Poseidon, made Hades swear an oath
with them: no more affairs with mortal women. They all swore on the River
Styx.’
Thunder boomed.
I said, ‘That’s the most serious oath you can make.’
Grover nodded.
‘And the brothers kept their word – no kids?’
Grover’s face darkened. ‘Seventeen years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. There
was this TV starlet with a big fluffy eighties hairdo – he just couldn’t help
himself. When their child was born, a little girl named Thalia… well, the River
Styx is serious about promises. Zeus himself got off easy because he’s immortal,
but he brought a terrible fate on his daughter.’
‘But that isn’t fair! It wasn’t the little girl’s fault.’
Grover hesitated. ‘Percy, children of the Big Three have powers greater than
other half-bloods. They have a strong aura, a scent that attracts monsters. When
Hades found out about the girl, he wasn’t too happy about Zeus breaking his
oath. Hades let the worst monsters out of Tartarus to torment Thalia. A satyr was
assigned to be her keeper when she was twelve, but there was nothing he could
do. He tried to escort her here with a couple of other half-bloods she’d
befriended. They almost made it. They got all the way to the top of that hill.’
He pointed across the valley, to the pine tree where I’d fought the Minotaur.
‘All three Kindly Ones were after them, along with a hoard of hellhounds. They
were about to be overrun when Thalia told her satyr to take the other two halfbloods to safety while she held off the monsters. She was wounded and tired,
and she didn’t want to live like a hunted animal. The satyr didn’t want to leave
her, but he couldn’t change her mind, and he had to protect the others. So Thalia
made her final stand alone, at the top of that hill. As she died, Zeus took pity on
her. He turned her into that pine tree. Her spirit still helps protect the borders of
the valley. That’s why the hill is called Half-Blood Hill.’
I stared at the pine in the distance.
The story made me feel hollow, and guilty, too. A girl my age had sacrificed
herself to save her friends. She had faced a whole army of monsters. Next to
that, my victory over the Minotaur didn’t seem like much. I wondered, if I’d
acted differently, could I have saved my mother?
‘Grover,’ I said, ‘have heroes really gone on quests to the Underworld?’
‘Sometimes,’ he said. ‘Orpheus. Hercules. Houdini.’
‘And have they ever returned somebody from the dead?’
‘No. Never. Orpheus came close…. Percy, you’re not seriously thinking –’
‘No,’ I lied. ‘I was just wondering. So… a satyr is always assigned to guard a
demigod?’
Grover studied me warily. I hadn’t persuaded him that I’d really dropped the
Underworld idea. ‘Not always. We go undercover to a lot of schools. We try to
sniff out the half-bloods who have the makings of great heroes. If we find one
with a very strong aura, like a child of the Big Three, we alert Chiron. He tries to
keep an eye on them, since they could cause really huge problems.’
‘And you found me. Chiron said you thought I might be something special.’
Grover looked as if I’d just led him into a trap. ‘I didn’t… Oh, listen, don’t
think like that. If you were – you know – you’d never ever be allowed a quest,
and I’d never get my licence. You’re probably a child of Hermes. Or maybe even
one of the minor gods, like Nemesis, the god of revenge. Don’t worry, okay?’
I got the idea he was reassuring himself more than me.
That night after dinner, there was a lot more excitement than usual.
At last, it was time for capture the flag.
When the plates were cleared away, the conch horn sounded and we all stood
at our tables.
Campers yelled and cheered as Annabeth and two of her siblings ran into the
pavilion carrying a silk banner. It was about three metres long, glistening grey,
with a painting of a barn owl above an olive tree. From the opposite side of the
pavilion, Clarisse and her buddies ran in with another banner, of identical size,
but gaudy red, painted with a bloody spear and a boar’s head.
I turned to Luke and yelled over the noise, ‘Those are the flags?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Ares and Athena always lead the teams?’
‘Not always,’ he said. ‘But often.’
‘So, if another cabin captures one, what do you do – repaint the flag?’
He grinned. ‘You’ll see. First we have to get one.’
‘Whose side are we on?’
He gave me a sly look, as if he knew something I didn’t. The scar on his face
made him look almost evil in the torchlight. ‘We’ve made a temporary alliance
with Athena. Tonight, we get the flag from Ares. And you are going to help.’
The teams were announced. Athena had made an alliance with Apollo and
Hermes, the two biggest cabins. Apparently, privileges had been traded – shower
times, chore schedules, the best slots for activities – in order to win support.
Ares had allied themselves with everybody else: Dionysus, Demeter,
Aphrodite and Hephaestus. From what I’d seen, Dionysus’s kids were actually
good athletes, but there were only two of them. Demeter’s kids had the edge
with nature skills and outdoor stuff, but they weren’t very aggressive.
Aphrodite’s sons and daughters I wasn’t too worried about. They mostly sat out
every activity and checked their reflections in the lake and did their hair and
gossiped. Hephaestus’s kids weren’t pretty, and there were only four of them, but
they were big and burly from working in the metal shop all day. They might be a
problem. That, of course, left Ares’s cabin: a dozen of the biggest, ugliest,
meanest kids on Long Island, or anywhere else on the planet.
Chiron hammered his hoof on the marble.
‘Heroes!’ he announced. ‘You know the rules. The creek is the boundary line.
The entire forest is fair game. All magic items are allowed. The banner must be
prominently displayed, and have no more than two guards. Prisoners may be
disarmed, but may not be bound or gagged. No killing or maiming is allowed. I
will serve as referee and battlefield medic. Arm yourselves!’
He spread his hands, and the tables were suddenly covered with equipment:
helmets, bronze swords, spears, oxhide shields coated in metal.
‘Whoa,’ I said. ‘We’re really supposed to use these?’
Luke looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘Unless you want to get skewered by
your friends in cabin five. Here – Chiron thought these would fit. You’ll be on
border patrol.’
My shield was the size of an NBA backboard, with a big caduceus in the
middle. It weighed about a million pounds. I could have snowboarded on it fine,
but I hoped nobody seriously expected me to run fast. My helmet, like all the
helmets on Athena’s side, had a blue horsehair plume on top. Ares and their
allies had red plumes.
Annabeth yelled, ‘Blue team, forward!’
We cheered and shook our swords and followed her down the path to the
south woods. The red team yelled taunts at us as they headed off towards the
north.
I managed to catch up with Annabeth without tripping over my equipment.
‘Hey.’
She kept marching.
‘So what’s the plan?’ I asked. ‘Got any magic items you can loan me?’
Her hand drifted towards her pocket, as if she were afraid I’d stolen
something.
‘Just watch Clarisse’s spear,’ she said. ‘You don’t want that thing touching
you. Otherwise, don’t worry. We’ll take the banner from Ares. Has Luke given
you your job?’
‘Border patrol, whatever that means.’
‘It’s easy. Stand by the creek, keep the reds away. Leave the rest to me.
Athena always has a plan.’
She pushed ahead, leaving me in the dust.
‘Okay,’ I mumbled. ‘Glad you wanted me on your team.’
It was a warm, sticky night. The woods were dark, with fireflies popping in
and out of view. Annabeth stationed me next to a little creek that gurgled over
some rocks, then she and the rest of the team scattered into the trees.
Standing there alone, with my big blue-feathered helmet and my huge shield, I
felt like an idiot. The bronze sword, like all the swords I’d tried so far, seemed
balanced wrong. The leather grip pulled on my hand like a bowling ball.
There was no way anybody would actually attack me, would they? I mean,
Olympus had to have liability issues, right?
Far away, the conch horn blew. I heard whoops and yells in the woods, the
clanking of metal, kids fighting. A blue-plumed ally from Apollo raced past me
like a deer, leaped through the creek and disappeared into enemy territory.
Great, I thought. I’ll miss all the fun, as usual.
Then I heard a sound that sent a chill up my spine, a low canine growl,
somewhere close by.
I raised my shield instinctively; I had the feeling something was stalking me.
Then the growling stopped. I felt the presence retreating.
On the other side of the creek, the underbrush exploded. Five Ares warriors
came yelling and screaming out of the dark.
‘Cream the punk!’ Clarisse screamed.
Her ugly pig eyes glared through the slits of her helmet. She brandished a
two-metre spear, its barbed metal tip flickering with red light. Her siblings had
only the standard-issue bronze swords – not that that made me feel any better.
They charged across the stream. There was no help in sight. I could run. Or I
could defend myself against half the Ares cabin.
I managed to sidestep the first kid’s swing, but these guys were not as stupid
as Minotaurs. They surrounded me, and Clarisse thrust at me with her spear. My
shield deflected the point, but I felt a painful tingling all over my body. My hair
stood on end. My shield arm went numb, and the air burned.
Electricity. Her stupid spear was electric. I fell back.
Another Ares guy slammed me in the chest with the butt of his sword and I hit
the dirt.
They could’ve kicked me into jelly, but they were too busy laughing.
‘Give him a haircut,’ Clarisse said. ‘Grab his hair.’
I managed to get to my feet. I raised my sword, but Clarisse slammed it aside
with her spear as sparks flew. Now both my arms felt numb.
‘Oh, wow,’ Clarisse said. ‘I’m scared of this guy. Really scared.’
‘The flag is that way,’ I told her. I wanted to sound angry, but I was afraid it
didn’t come out that way.
‘Yeah,’ one of her siblings said. ‘But see, we don’t care about the flag. We
care about a guy who made our cabin look stupid.’
‘You do that without my help,’ I told them. It probably wasn’t the smartest
thing to say.
Two of them came at me. I backed up towards the creek, tried to raise my
shield, but Clarisse was too fast. Her spear stuck me straight in the ribs. If I
hadn’t been wearing an armoured breast plate, I would’ve been shish-kebabbed.
As it was, the electric point just about shocked my teeth out of my mouth. One
of her cabinmates slashed his sword across my arm, leaving a good-size cut.
Seeing my own blood made me dizzy, warm and cold at the same time.
‘No maiming,’ I managed to say.
‘Oops,’ the guy said. ‘Guess I lost my dessert privilege.’
He pushed me into the creek and I landed with a splash. They all laughed. I
figured as soon as they were through being amused, I would die. But then
something happened. The water seemed to wake up my senses, as if I’d just had
a bag of my mom’s double-espresso jelly beans.
Clarisse and her cabinmates came into the creek to get me, but I stood to meet
them. I knew what to do. I swung the flat of my sword against the first guy’s
head and knocked his helmet clean off. I hit him so hard I could see his eyes
vibrating as he crumpled into the water.
Ugly Number Two and Ugly Number Three came at me. I slammed one in the
face with my shield and used my sword to shear off the other guy’s horsehair
plume. Both of them backed up quick. Ugly Number Four didn’t look really
anxious to attack, but Clarisse kept coming, the point of her spear crackling with
energy. As soon as she thrust, I caught the shaft between the edge of my shield
and my sword, and I snapped it like a twig.
‘Ah!’ she screamed. ‘You idiot! You corpse-breath worm!’
She probably would’ve said worse, but I smacked her between the eyes with
my sword-butt and sent her stumbling backwards out of the creek.
Then I heard yelling, elated screams, and I saw Luke racing towards the
boundary line with the red team’s banner lifted high. He was flanked by a couple
of Hermes guys covering his retreat and a few Apollos behind them, fighting off
the Hephaestus kids. The Ares folks got up, and Clarisse muttered a dazed curse.
‘A trick!’ she shouted. ‘It was a trick.’
They staggered after Luke, but it was too late. Everybody converged on the
creek as Luke ran across into friendly territory. Our side exploded into cheers.
The red banner shimmered and turned to silver. The boar and spear were
replaced with a huge caduceus, the symbol of cabin eleven. Everybody on the
blue team picked up Luke and started carrying him around on their shoulders.
Chiron cantered out from the woods and blew the conch horn.
The game was over. We’d won.
I was about to join the celebration when Annabeth’s voice, right next to me in
the creek, said, ‘Not bad, hero.’
I looked, but she wasn’t there.
‘Where the heck did you learn to fight like that?’ she asked. The air
shimmered, and she materialized, holding a Yankees baseball cap as if she’d just
taken it off her head.
I felt myself getting angry. I wasn’t even fazed by the fact that she’d just been
invisible. ‘You set me up,’ I said. ‘You put me here because you knew Clarisse
would come after me, while you sent Luke around the flank. You had it all
figured out.’
Annabeth shrugged. ‘I told you. Athena always, always has a plan.’
‘A plan to get me pulverized.’
‘I came as fast as I could. I was about to jump in, but…’ She shrugged. ‘You
didn’t need help.’
Then she noticed my wounded arm. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Sword cut,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’
‘No. It was a sword cut. Look at it.’
The blood was gone. Where the huge cut had been, there was a long white
scratch, and even that was fading. As I watched, it turned into a small scar, and
disappeared.
‘I – I don’t get it,’ I said.
Annabeth was thinking hard. I could almost see the gears turning. She looked
down at my feet, then at Clarisse’s broken spear, and said, ‘Step out of the water,
Percy.’
‘What –’
‘Just do it.’
I came out of the creek and immediately felt bone tired. My arms started to go
numb again. My adrenalin rush left me. I almost fell over, but Annabeth steadied
me.
‘Oh, Styx,’ she cursed. ‘This is not good. I didn’t want… I assumed it would
be Zeus.…’
Before I could ask what she meant, I heard that canine growl again, but much
closer than before. A howl ripped through the forest.
The campers’ cheering died instantly. Chiron shouted something in Ancient
Greek, which I would realize, only later, I had understood perfectly: ‘Stand
ready! My bow!’
Annabeth drew her sword.
There on the rocks just above us was a black hound the size of a rhino, with
lava-red eyes and fangs like daggers.
It was looking straight at me.
Nobody moved except Annabeth, who yelled, ‘Percy, run!’
She tried to step in front of me, but the hound was too fast. It leaped over her
– an enormous shadow with teeth – and just as it hit me, as I stumbled
backwards and felt its razor-sharp claws ripping through my armour, there was a
cascade of thwacking sounds, like forty pieces of paper being ripped one after
the other. From the hound’s neck sprouted a cluster of arrows. The monster fell
dead at my feet.
By some miracle, I was still alive. I didn’t want to look underneath the ruins
of my shredded armour. My chest felt warm and wet, and I knew I was badly
cut. Another second, and the monster would’ve turned me into fifty kilograms of
delicatessen meat.
Chiron trotted up next to us, a bow in his hand, his face grim.
‘Di immortales,’ Annabeth said. ‘That’s a hellhound from the Fields of
Punishment. They don’t… they’re not supposed to…’
‘Someone summoned it,’ Chiron said. ‘Someone inside the camp.’
Luke came over, the banner in his hand forgotten, his moment of glory gone.
Clarisse yelled, ‘It’s all Percy’s fault! Percy summoned it!’
‘Be quiet, child,’ Chiron told her.
We watched the body of the hellhound melt into shadow, soaking into the
ground until it disappeared.
‘You’re wounded,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Quick, Percy, get in the water.’
‘I’m okay.’
‘No, you’re not,’ she said. ‘Chiron, watch this.’
I was too tired to argue. I stepped back into the creek, the whole camp
gathering around me.
Instantly, I felt better. I could feel the cuts on my chest closing up. Some of the
campers gasped.
‘Look, I – I don’t know why,’ I said, trying to apologize. ‘I’m sorry…’
But they weren’t watching my wounds heal. They were staring at something
above my head.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said, pointing. ‘Um…’
By the time I looked up, the sign was already fading, but I could still make out
the hologram of green light, spinning and gleaming. A three-tipped spear: a
trident.
‘Your father,’ Annabeth murmured. ‘This is really not good.’
‘It is determined,’ Chiron announced.
All around me, campers started kneeling, even the Ares cabin, though they
didn’t look happy about it.
‘My father?’ I asked, completely bewildered.
‘Poseidon,’ said Chiron. ‘Earthshaker, Stormbringer, Father of Horses. Hail,
Perseus Jackson, Son of the Sea God.’
9 I Am Offered a Quest
The next morning, Chiron moved me to cabin three.
I didn’t have to share with anybody. I had plenty of room for all my stuff: the
Minotaur horn, one set of spare clothes and a toiletry bag. I got to sit at my own
dinner table, pick all my own activities, call ‘lights out’ whenever I felt like it
and not listen to anybody else.
And I was absolutely miserable.
Just when I’d started to feel accepted, to feel I had a home in cabin eleven and
I might be a normal kid – or as normal as you can be when you’re a half-blood –
I’d been separated out as if I had some rare disease.
Nobody mentioned the hellhound, but I got the feeling they were all talking
about it behind my back. The attack had scared everybody. It sent two messages:
one, that I was the son of the Sea God; and two, monsters would stop at nothing
to kill me. They could even invade a camp that had always been considered safe.
The other campers steered clear of me as much as possible. Cabin eleven was
too nervous to have sword class with me after what I’d done to the Ares folks in
the woods, so my lessons with Luke became one-on-one. He pushed me harder
than ever, and wasn’t afraid to bruise me up in the process.
‘You’re going to need all the training you can get,’ he promised, as we were
working with swords and flaming torches. ‘Now let’s try that viper-beheading
strike again. Fifty more repetitions.’
Annabeth still taught me Greek in the mornings, but she seemed distracted.
Every time I said something, she scowled at me, as if I’d just poked her between
the eyes.
After lessons, she would walk away muttering to herself: ‘Quest…
Poseidon?… Dirty rotten… Got to make a plan…’
Even Clarisse kept her distance, though her venomous looks made it clear she
wanted to kill me for breaking her magic spear. I wished she would just yell or
punch me or something. I’d rather get into fights every day than be ignored.
I knew somebody at camp resented me, because one night I came into my cabin
and found a mortal newspaper dropped inside the doorway, a New York Daily
News, opened to the Metro page. The article took me almost an hour to read,
because the angrier I got, the more the words floated around on the page.
BOY AND MOTHER STILL MISSING AFTER FREAK CAR ACCIDENT
BY EILEEN SMYTHE
Sally Jackson and son Percy are still missing one week after their mysterious disappearance.
The family’s badly burned ‘78 Camaro was discovered last Saturday on a north Long Island
road with the roof ripped off and the front axle broken. The car had flipped and skidded for
several hundred metres before exploding.
Mother and son had gone for a weekend vacation to Montauk, but left hastily, under
mysterious circumstances. Small traces of blood were found in the car and near the scene of
the wreck, but there were no other signs of the missing Jacksons. Residents in the rural area
reported seeing nothing unusual around the time of the accident.
Ms Jackson’s husband, Gabe Ugliano, claims that his stepson, Percy Jackson, is a troubled
child who has been kicked out of numerous boarding schools and has expressed violent
tendencies in the past.
Police would not say whether son Percy is a suspect in his mother’s disappearance, but
they have not ruled out foul play. Below are recent pictures of Sally Jackson and Percy. Police
urge anyone with information to call the following toll-free crime-stoppers hotline.
The phone number was circled in black marker.
I wadded up the paper and threw it away, then flopped down in my bunk bed
in the middle of my empty cabin.
‘Lights out,’ I told myself miserably.
That night, I had my worst dream yet.
I was running along the beach in a storm. This time, there was a city behind
me. Not New York. The sprawl was different: buildings spread farther apart,
palm trees and low hills in the distance.
About a hundred metres down the surf, two men were fighting. They looked
like TV wrestlers, muscular, with beards and long hair. Both wore flowing Greek
tunics, one trimmed in blue, the other in green. They grappled with each other,
wrestled, kicked and head-butted, and every time they connected, lightning
flashed, the sky grew darker, and the wind rose.
I had to stop them. I didn’t know why. But the harder I ran, the more the wind
blew me back, until I was running on the spot, my heels digging uselessly in the
sand.
Over the roar of the storm, I could hear the blue-robed one yelling at the
green-robed one, Give it back! Give it back! Like a kindergartner fighting over a
toy.
The waves got bigger, crashing into the beach, spraying me with salt.
I yelled, Stop it! Stop fighting!
The ground shook. Laughter came from somewhere under the earth, and a
voice so deep and evil it turned my blood to ice.
‘Come down, little hero,’ the voice crooned. ‘Come down!’
The sand split beneath me, opening up a crevice straight down to the centre of
the earth. My feet slipped, and darkness swallowed me.
I woke up, sure I was falling.
I was still in bed in cabin three. My body told me it was morning, but it was
dark outside, and thunder rolled across the hills. A storm was brewing. I hadn’t
dreamed that.
I heard a clopping sound at the door, a hoof knocking on the threshold.
‘Come in.’
Grover trotted inside, looking worried. ‘Mr D wants to see you.’
‘Why?’
‘He wants to kill… I mean, I’d better let him tell you.’
Nervously, I got dressed and followed, sure that I was in huge trouble.
For days, I’d been half expecting a summons to the Big House. Now that I
was declared a son of Poseidon, one of the Big Three gods who weren’t
supposed to have kids, I figured it was a crime for me just to be alive. The other
gods had probably been debating the best way to punish me for existing, and
now Mr D was ready to deliver their verdict.
Over Long Island Sound, the sky looked like ink soup coming to a boil. A
hazy curtain of rain was coming in our direction. I asked Grover if we needed an
umbrella.
‘No,’ he said. ‘It never rains here unless we want it to.’
I pointed at the storm. ‘What the heck is that, then?’
He glanced uneasily at the sky. ‘It’ll pass around us. Bad weather always
does.’
I realized he was right. In the week I’d been here, it had never even been
overcast. The few rain clouds I’d seen had skirted right around the edges of the
valley.
But this storm… this one was huge.
At the volleyball pit, the kids from Apollo’s cabin were playing a morning
game against the satyrs. Dionysus’s twins were walking around in the strawberry
fields, making the plants grow. Everybody was going about their normal
business, but they looked tense. They kept their eyes on the storm.
Grover and I walked up to the front porch of the Big House. Dionysus sat at
the pinochle table in his tiger-striped Hawaiian shirt with his Diet Coke, just as
he had on my first day. Chiron sat across the table in his fake wheelchair. They
were playing against invisible opponents – two sets of cards hovering in the air.
‘Well, well,’ Mr D said without looking up. ‘Our little celebrity.’
I waited.
‘Come closer,’ Mr D said. ‘And don’t expect me to kowtow to you, mortal,
just because old Barnacle-Beard is your father.’
A net of lightning flashed across the clouds. Thunder shook the windows of
the house.
‘Blah, blah, blah,’ Dionysus said.
Chiron feigned interest in his pinochle cards. Grover cowered by the railing,
his hooves clopping back and forth.
‘If I had my way,’ Dionysus said, ‘I would cause your molecules to erupt in
flames. We’d sweep up the ashes and be done with a lot of trouble. But Chiron
seems to feel this would be against my mission at this cursed camp: to keep you
little brats safe from harm.’
‘Spontaneous combustion is a form of harm, Mr D,’ Chiron put in.
‘Nonsense,’ Dionysus said. ‘Boy wouldn’t feel a thing. Nevertheless, I’ve
agreed to restrain myself. I’m thinking of turning you into a dolphin instead,
sending you back to your father.’
‘Mr D –’ Chiron warned.
‘Oh, all right,’ Dionysus relented. ‘There’s one more option. But it’s deadly
foolishness.’ Dionysus rose, and the invisible players’ cards dropped to the table.
‘I’m off to Olympus for the emergency meeting. If the boy is still here when I
get back, I’ll turn him into an Atlantic bottlenose. Do you understand? And
Perseus Jackson, if you’re at all smart, you’ll see that’s a much more sensible
choice than what Chiron feels you must do.’
Dionysus picked up a playing card, twisted it, and it became a plastic
rectangle. A credit card? No. A security pass.
He snapped his fingers.
The air seemed to fold and bend around him. He became a holograph, then a
wind, then he was gone, leaving only the smell of fresh-pressed grapes lingering
behind.
Chiron smiled at me, but he looked tired and strained. ‘Sit, Percy, please. And
Grover.’
We did.
Chiron laid his cards on the table, a winning hand he hadn’t got to use.
‘Tell me, Percy,’ he said. ‘What did you make of the hellhound?’
Just hearing the name made me shudder.
Chiron probably wanted me to say, Heck, it was nothing. I eat hellhounds for
breakfast. But I didn’t feel like lying.
‘It scared me,’ I said. ‘If you hadn’t shot it, I’d be dead.’
‘You’ll meet worse, Percy. Far worse, before you’re done.’
‘Done… with what?’
‘Your quest, of course. Will you accept it?’
I glanced at Grover, who was crossing his fingers.
‘Um, sir,’ I said, ‘you haven’t told me what it is yet.’
Chiron grimaced. ‘Well, that’s the hard part, the details.’
Thunder rumbled across the valley. The storm clouds had now reached the
edge of the beach. As far as I could see, the sky and the sea were boiling
together.
‘Poseidon and Zeus,’ I said. ‘They’re fighting over something valuable…
something that was stolen, aren’t they?’
Chiron and Grover exchanged looks.
Chiron sat forward in his wheelchair. ‘How did you know that?’
My face felt hot. I wished I hadn’t opened my big mouth. ‘The weather since
Christmas has been weird, like the sea and the sky are fighting. Then I talked to
Annabeth, and she’d overheard something about a theft. And… I’ve also been
having these dreams.’
‘I knew it,’ Grover said.
‘Hush, satyr,’ Chiron ordered.
‘But it is his quest!’ Grover’s eyes were bright with excitement. ‘It must be!’
‘Only the Oracle can determine.’ Chiron stroked his bristly beard.
‘Nevertheless, Percy, you are correct. Your father and Zeus are having their
worst quarrel in centuries. They are fighting over something valuable that was
stolen. To be precise: a lightning bolt.’
I laughed nervously. ‘A what?’
‘Do not take this lightly,’ Chiron warned. ‘I’m not talking about some tinfoilcovered zigzag you’d see in a second-grade play. I’m talking about a two-footlong cylinder of high-grade celestial bronze, capped on both ends with god-level
explosives.’
‘Oh.’
‘Zeus’s master bolt,’ Chiron said, getting worked up now. ‘The symbol of his
power, from which all other lightning bolts are patterned. The first weapon made
by the Cyclopes for the war against the Titans, the bolt that sheered the top off
Mount Etna and hurled Kronos from his throne; the master bolt, which packs
enough power to make mortal hydrogen bombs look like firecrackers.’
‘And it’s missing?’
‘Stolen,’ Chiron said.
‘By who?’
‘By whom’ Chiron corrected. Once a teacher, always a teacher. ‘By you.’
My mouth fell open.
‘At least’ – Chiron held up a hand – ‘that’s what Zeus thinks. During the
winter solstice, at the last council of the gods, Zeus and Poseidon had an
argument. The usual nonsense: “Mother Rhea always liked you best,” “Air
disasters are more spectacular than sea disasters,” et cetera. Afterwards, Zeus
realized his master bolt was missing, taken from the throne room under his very
nose. He immediately blamed Poseidon. Now a god cannot usurp another god‘s
symbol of power directly – that is forbidden by the most ancient of divine laws.
But Zeus believes your father convinced a human hero to take it.’
‘But I didn’t –’
‘Patience and listen, child,’ Chiron said. ‘Zeus has good reason to be
suspicious. The forges of the Cyclopes are under the ocean, which gives
Poseidon some influence over the makers of his brother’s lightning. Zeus
believes Poseidon has taken the master bolt, and is now secretly having the
Cyclopes build an arsenal of illegal copies, which might be used to topple Zeus
from his throne. The only thing Zeus wasn’t sure about was which hero Poseidon
used to steal the bolt. Now Poseidon has openly claimed you as his son. You
were in New York over the winter holidays. You could easily have snuck into
Olympus. Zeus believes he has found his thief.’
‘But I’ve never even been to Olympus! Zeus is crazy!’
Chiron and Grover glanced nervously at the sky. The clouds didn’t seem to be
parting around us, as Grover had promised. They were rolling straight over our
valley, sealing us in like a coffin lid.
‘Er, Percy…?’ Grover said. ‘We don’t use the c-word to describe the Lord of
the Sky.’
‘Perhaps paranoid,’ Chiron suggested. ‘Then again, Poseidon has tried to
unseat Zeus before. I believe that was question thirty-eight on your final
exam…’ He looked at me as if he actually expected me to remember question
thirty-eight.
How could anyone accuse me of stealing a god’s weapon? I couldn’t even
steal a slice of pizza from Gabe’s poker party without getting busted. Chiron was
waiting for an answer.
‘Something about a golden net?’ I guessed. ‘Poseidon and Hera and a few
other gods… they, like, trapped Zeus and wouldn’t let him out until he promised
to be a better ruler, right?’
‘Correct,’ Chiron said. ‘And Zeus has never trusted Poseidon since. Of course,
Poseidon denies stealing the master bolt. He took great offence at the accusation.
The two have been arguing back and forth for months, threatening war. And
now, you’ve come along – the proverbial last straw.’
‘But I’m just a kid!’
‘Percy,’ Grover cut in, ‘if you were Zeus, and you already thought your
brother was plotting to overthrow you, then your brother suddenly admitted he
had broken the sacred oath he took after World War II, that he’s fathered a new
mortal hero who might be used as a weapon against you… Wouldn’t that put a
twist in your toga?’
‘But I didn’t do anything. Poseidon – my dad – he didn’t really have this
master bolt stolen, did he?’
Chiron sighed. ‘Most thinking observers would agree that thievery is not
Poseidon’s style. But the sea god is too proud to try convincing Zeus of that.
Zeus has demanded that Poseidon return the bolt by the summer solstice. That’s
June twenty-first, ten days from now. Poseidon wants an apology for being
called a thief by the same date. I hoped that diplomacy might prevail, that Hera
or Demeter or Hestia would make the two brothers see sense. But your arrival
has inflamed Zeus’s temper. Now neither god will back down. Unless someone
intervenes, unless the master bolt is found and returned to Zeus before the
solstice, there will be war. And do you know what a full-fledged war would look
like, Percy?’
‘Bad?’ I guessed.
‘Imagine the world in chaos. Nature at war with itself. Olympians forced to
choose sides between Zeus and Poseidon. Destruction. Carnage. Millions dead.
Western civilization turned into a battleground so big it will make the Trojan
War look like a water-balloon fight.’
‘Bad,’ I repeated.
‘And you, Percy Jackson, would be the first to feel Zeus’s wrath.’
It started to rain. Volleyball players stopped their game and stared in stunned
silence at the sky.
I had brought this storm to Half-Blood Hill. Zeus was punishing the whole
camp because of me. I was furious.
‘So I have to find the stupid bolt,’ I said. ‘And return it to Zeus.’
‘What better peace offering,’ Chiron said, ‘than to have the son of Poseidon
return Zeus’s property?’
‘If Poseidon doesn’t have it, where is the thing?’
‘I believe I know.’ Chiron’s expression was grim. ‘Part of a prophecy I had
years ago… well, some of the lines make sense to me, now. But before I can say
more, you must officially take up the quest. You must seek the counsel of the
Oracle.’
‘Why can’t you tell me where the bolt is beforehand?’
‘Because if I did, you would be too afraid to accept the challenge.’
I swallowed. ‘Good reason.’
‘You agree then?’
I looked at Grover, who nodded encouragingly.
Easy for him. I was the one Zeus wanted to kill.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘It’s better than being turned into a dolphin.’
‘Then it’s time you consulted the Oracle,’ Chiron said. ‘Go upstairs, Percy
Jackson, to the attic. When you come back down, assuming you’re still sane, we
will talk more.’
Four flights up, the stairs ended under a green trapdoor.
I pulled the cord. The door swung down, and a wooden ladder clattered into
place.
The warm air from above smelled like mildew and rotten wood and something
else… a smell I remembered from biology class. Reptiles. The smell of snakes.
I held my breath and climbed.
The attic was filled with Greek hero junk: armour stands covered in cobwebs;
once-bright shields pitted with rust; old leather steamer trunks plastered with
stickers saying ITHAKA, CIRCE’S ISLE and LAND OF THE AMAZONS. One
long table was stacked with glass jars filled with pickled things– severed hairy
claws, huge yellow eyes, various other parts of monsters. A dusty mounted
trophy on the wall looked like a giant snake’s head, but with horns and a full set
of shark’s teeth. The plaque read: HYDRA HEAD NO. I, WOODSTOCK, NY,
1969.
By the window, sitting on a wooden tripod stool, was the most gruesome
memento of all: a mummy. Not the wrapped-in-cloth kind, but a human female
body shrivelled to a husk. She wore a tie-dyed sundress, lots of beaded
necklaces, and a headband over long black hair. The skin of her face was thin
and leathery over her skull, and her eyes were glassy white slits, as if the real
eyes had been replaced by marbles; she’d been dead a long, long time.
Looking at her sent chills up my back. And that was before she sat up on her
stool and opened her mouth. A green mist poured from the mummy’s mouth,
coiling over the floor in thick tendrils, hissing like twenty-thousand snakes. I
stumbled over myself trying to get to the trapdoor, but it slammed shut. Inside
my head, I heard a voice, slithering into one ear and coiling around my brain: I
am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of
the mighty Python. Approach, seeker, and ask.
I wanted to say, No thanks, wrong door, just looking for the bathroom. But I
forced myself to take a deep breath.
The mummy wasn’t alive. She was some kind of gruesome receptacle for
something else, the power that was now swirling around me in the green mist.
But its presence didn’t feel evil, like my demonic maths teacher Mrs Dodds or
the Minotaur. It felt more like the Three Fates I’d seen knitting the yarn outside
the highway fruit stand: ancient, powerful and definitely not human. But not
particularly interested in killing me, either.
I got up the courage to ask, ‘What is my destiny?’
The mist swirled more thickly, collecting right in front of me and around the
table with the pickled monster-part jars. Suddenly there were four men sitting
around the table, playing cards. Their faces became clearer. It was Smelly Gabe
and his buddies.
My fists clenched, though I knew this poker party couldn’t be real. It was an
illusion, made out of mist.
Gabe turned towards me and spoke in the rasping voice of the Oracle: You
shall go west, and face the god who has turned.
His buddy on the right looked up and said in the same voice: You shall find what
was stolen, and see it safely returned.
The guy on the left threw in two poker chips, then said: You shall be betrayed by
one who calls you a friend.
Finally, Eddie, our building super, delivered the worst line of all: And you shall
fail to save what matters most, in the end.
The figures began to dissolve. At first I was too stunned to say anything, but as
the mist retreated, coiling into a huge green serpent and slithering back into the
mouth of the mummy, I cried, ‘Wait! What do you mean? What friend? What
will I fail to save?’
The tail of the mist snake disappeared into the mummy’s mouth. She reclined
back against the wall. Her mouth closed tight, as if it hadn’t been open in a
hundred years. The attic was silent again, abandoned, nothing but a room full of
mementos.
I got the feeling that I could stand here until I had cobwebs, too, and I
wouldn’t learn anything else.
My audience with the Oracle was over.
‘Well?’ Chiron asked me.
I slumped into a chair at the pinochle table. ‘She said I would retrieve what
was stolen.’
Grover sat forward, chewing excitedly on the remains of a Diet Coke can.
‘That’s great!’
‘What did the Oracle say exactly?’ Chiron pressed. ‘This is important.’
My ears were still tingling from the reptilian voice. ‘She… she said I would
go west and face a god who had turned. I would retrieve what was stolen and see
it safely returned.’
‘I knew it,’ Grover said.
Chiron didn’t look satisfied. ‘Anything else?’
I didn’t want to tell him.
What friend would betray me? I didn’t have that many.
And the last line – I would fail to save what mattered most. What kind of
Oracle would send me on a quest and tell me, Oh, by the way, you’ll fail.
How could I confess that?
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s about it.’
He studied my face. ‘Very well, Percy. But know this: the Oracle’s words
often have double meanings. Don’t dwell on them too much. The truth is not
always clear until events come to pass.’
I got the feeling he knew I was holding back something bad, and he was trying
to make me feel better.
‘Okay,’ I said, anxious to change topics. ‘So where do I go? Who’s this god in
the west?’
‘Ah, think, Percy’ Chiron said. ‘If Zeus and Poseidon weaken each other in a
war, who stands to gain?’
‘Somebody else who wants to take over?’ I guessed.
‘Yes, quite. Someone who harbours a grudge, who has been unhappy with his
lot since the world was divided aeons ago, whose kingdom would grow powerful
with the deaths of millions. Someone who hates his brothers for forcing him into
an oath to have no more children, an oath that both of them have now broken.’
I thought about my dreams, the evil voice that had spoken from under the
ground. ‘Hades.’
Chiron nodded. ‘The Lord of the Dead is the only possibility.’
A scrap of aluminium dribbled out of Grover’s mouth. ‘Whoa, wait. Wh-
what?’
‘A Fury came after Percy,’ Chiron reminded him. ‘She watched the young
man until she was sure of his identity, then tried to kill him. Furies obey only one
lord: Hades.’
‘Yes, but – but Hades hates all heroes,’ Grover protested. ‘Especially if he has
found out Percy is a son of Poseidon…’
‘A hellhound got into the forest,’ Chiron continued. ‘Those can only be
summoned from the Fields of Punishment, and it had to be summoned by
someone within the camp. Hades must have a spy here. He must suspect
Poseidon will try to use Percy to clear his name. Hades would very much like to
kill this young half-blood before he can take on the quest.’
‘Great,’ I muttered. ‘That’s two major gods who want to kill me.’
‘But a quest to…’ Grover swallowed. ‘I mean, couldn’t the master bolt be in
some place like Maine? Maine’s very nice this time of year.’
‘Hades sent a minion to steal the master bolt,’ Chiron insisted. ‘He hid it in the
Underworld, knowing full well that Zeus would blame Poseidon. I don’t pretend
to understand the Lord of the Dead’s motives perfectly, or why he chose this
time to start a war, but one thing is certain. Percy must go to the Underworld,
find the master bolt, and reveal the truth.’
A strange fire burned in my stomach. The weirdest thing was: it wasn’t fear. It
was anticipation. The desire for revenge. Hades had tried to kill me three times
so far, with the Fury, the Minotaur and the hellhound. It was his fault my mother
had disappeared in a flash of light. Now he was trying to frame me and my dad
for a theft we hadn’t committed.
I was ready to take him on.
Besides, if my mother was in the Underworld…
Whoa, boy, said the small part of my brain that was still sane. You’re a kid.
Hades is a god.
Grover was trembling. He’d started eating pinochle cards like potato crisps.
The poor guy needed to complete a quest with me so he could get his
searcher’s licence, whatever that was, but how could I ask him to do this quest,
especially when the Oracle said I was destined to fail? This was suicide.
‘Look, if we know it’s Hades,’ I told Chiron, ‘why can’t we just tell the other
gods? Zeus or Poseidon could go down to the Underworld and bust some heads.’
‘Suspecting and knowing are not the same,’ Chiron said. ‘Besides, even if the
other gods suspect Hades – and I imagine Poseidon does – they couldn’t retrieve
the bolt themselves. Gods cannot cross each other’s territories except by
invitation. That is another ancient rule. Heroes, on the other hand, have certain
privileges. They can go anywhere, challenge anyone, as long as they’re bold
enough and strong enough to do it. No god can be held responsible for a hero’s
actions. Why do you think the gods always operate through humans?’
‘You’re saying I’m being used.’
‘I’m saying it’s no accident Poseidon has claimed you now. It’s a very risky
gamble, but he’s in a desperate situation. He needs you.’
My dad needs me.
Emotions rolled around inside me like bits of glass in a kaleidoscope. I didn’t
know whether to feel resentful or grateful or happy or angry. Poseidon had
ignored me for twelve years. Now suddenly he needed me.
I looked at Chiron. ‘You’ve known I was Poseidon’s son all along, haven’t
you?’
‘I had my suspicions. As I said… I’ve spoken to the Oracle, too.’
I got the feeling there was a lot he wasn’t telling me about his prophecy, but I
decided I couldn’t worry about that right now. After all, I was holding back
information too.
‘So let me get this straight,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed go to the Underworld and
confront the Lord of the Dead.’
‘Check,’ Chiron said.
‘Find the most powerful weapon in the universe.’
‘Check.’
‘And get it back to Olympus before the summer solstice, in ten days.’
‘That’s about right.’
I looked at Grover, who gulped down the ace of hearts.
‘Did I mention that Maine is very nice this time of year?’ he asked weakly.
‘You don’t have to go,’ I told him. ‘I can’t ask that of you.’
‘Oh…’ He shifted his hooves. ‘No… it’s just that satyrs and underground
places… well…’
He took a deep breath, then stood, brushing the shredded cards and aluminium
bits off his T-shirt. ‘You saved my life, Percy. If… if you’re serious about
wanting me along, I won’t let you down.’
I felt so relieved I wanted to cry, though I didn’t think that would be very
heroic. Grover was the only friend I’d ever had for longer than a few months. I
wasn’t sure what good a satyr could do against the forces of the dead, but I felt
better knowing he’d be with me.
‘All the way, G-man.’ I turned to Chiron. ‘So where do we go? The Oracle
just said to go west.’
‘The entrance to the Underworld is always in the west. It moves from age to
age, just like Olympus. Right now, of course, it’s in America.’
‘Where?’
Chiron looked surprised. ‘I thought that would be obvious enough. The
entrance to the Underworld is in Los Angeles.’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Naturally. So we just get on a plane –’
‘No!’ Grover shrieked. ‘Percy, what are you thinking? Have you ever been on
a plane in your life?’
I shook my head, feeling embarrassed. My mom had never taken me
anywhere by plane. She’d always said we didn’t have the money. Besides, her
parents had died in a plane crash.
‘Percy, think,’ Chiron said. ‘You are the son of the Sea God. Your father’s
bitterest rival is Zeus, Lord of the Sky. Your mother knew better than to trust you
in an aeroplane. You would be in Zeus’s domain. You would never come down
again alive.’
Overhead, lightning crackled. Thunder boomed.
‘Okay,’ I said, determined not to look at the storm. ‘So, I’ll travel overland.’
‘That’s right,’ Chiron said. ‘Two companions may accompany you. Grover is
one. The other has already volunteered, if you will accept her help.’
‘Gee,’ I said, feigning surprise. ‘Who else would be stupid enough to
volunteer for a quest like this?’
The air shimmered behind Chiron.
Annabeth became visible, stuffing her Yankees cap into her back pocket.
‘I’ve been waiting a long time for a quest, Seaweed Brain,’ she said. ‘Athena
is no fan of Poseidon, but if you’re going to save the world, I’m the best person
to keep you from messing up.’
‘If you do say so yourself,’ I said. ‘I suppose you have a plan, Wise Girl?’
Her cheeks coloured. ‘Do you want my help or not?’
The truth was, I did. I needed all the help I could get.
‘A trio,’ I said. ‘That’ll work.’
‘Excellent,’ Chiron said. ‘This afternoon, we can take you as far as the bus
terminal in Manhattan. After that, you are on your own.’
Lightning flashed. Rain poured down on the meadows that were never
supposed to have violent weather.
‘No time to waste,’ Chiron said. ‘I think you should all get packing.’
10
I Ruin a Perfectly Good Bus
It didn’t take me long to pack. I decided to leave the Minotaur horn in my cabin,
which left me only an extra change of clothes and a toothbrush to stuff in a
backpack Grover had found for me.
The camp store loaned me one hundred dollars in mortal money and twenty
golden drachmas. These coins were as big as Girl Scout cookies and had images
of various Greek gods stamped on one side and the Empire State Building on the
other. The ancient mortal drachmas had been silver, Chiron told us, but
Olympians never used less than pure gold. Chiron said the coins might come in
handy for nonmortal transactions – whatever that meant. He gave Annabeth and
me each a flask of nectar and an airtight bag full of ambrosia squares, to be used
only in emergencies, if we were seriously hurt. It was god food, Chiron
reminded us. It would cure us of almost any injury, but it was lethal to mortals.
Too much of it would make a half-blood very, very feverish. An overdose would
burn us up, literally.
Annabeth was bringing her magic Yankees cap, which she told me had been a
twelfth-birthday present from her mom. She carried a book on famous classical
architecture, written in Ancient Greek, to read when she got bored, and a long
bronze knife, hidden in her shirt sleeve. I was sure the knife would get us busted
the first time we went through a metal detector.
Grover wore his fake feet and his trousers to pass as human. He wore a green
rasta-style cap, because when it rained his curly hair flattened and you could just
see the tips of his horns. His bright orange backpack was full of scrap metal and
apples to snack on. In his pocket was a set of reed pipes his daddy goat had
carved for him, even though he only knew two songs: Mozart’s Piano Concerto
no. 12 and Hilary Duff’s ‘So Yesterday’, both of which sounded pretty bad on
reed pipes.
We waved goodbye to the other campers, took one last look at the strawberry
fields, the ocean and the Big House, then hiked up Half-Blood Hill to the tall
pine tree that used to be Thalia, daughter of Zeus.
Chiron was waiting for us in his wheelchair. Next to him stood the surfer dude
I’d seen when I was recovering in the sick room. According to Grover, the guy
was the camp’s head of security. He supposedly had eyes all over his body so he
could never be surprised. Today, though, he was wearing a chauffeur’s uniform,
so I could only see extra peepers on his hands, face and neck.
‘This is Argus,’ Chiron told me. ‘He will drive you into the city, and, er, well,
keep an eye on things.’
I heard footsteps behind us.
Luke came running up the hill, carrying a pair of basketball shoes.
‘Hey!’ he panted. ‘Glad I caught you.’
Annabeth blushed, the way she always did when Luke was around.
‘Just wanted to say good luck,’ Luke told me. ‘And I thought… um, maybe
you could use these.’
He handed me the sneakers, which looked pretty normal. They even smelled
kind of normal.
Luke said, ‘Maia!’
White bird’s wings sprouted out of the heels, startling me so much, I dropped
them. The shoes flapped around on the ground until the wings folded up and
disappeared.
‘Awesome!’ Grover said.
Luke smiled. ‘Those served me well when I was on my quest. Gift from Dad.
Of course, I don’t use them much these days…’ His expression turned sad.
I didn’t know what to say. It was cool enough that Luke had come to say
goodbye. I’d been afraid he might resent me for getting so much attention the
last few days. But here he was giving me a magic gift… It made me blush
almost as much as Annabeth.
‘Hey, man,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Listen, Percy…’ Luke looked uncomfortable. ‘A lot of hopes are riding on
you. So just… kill some monsters for me, okay?’
We shook hands. Luke patted Grover’s head between his horns, then gave a
goodbye hug to Annabeth, who looked like she might pass out.
After Luke was gone, I told her, ‘You’re hyperventilating.’
‘Am not.’
‘You let him capture the flag instead of you, didn’t you?’
‘Oh… why do I want to go anywhere with you, Percy?’
She stomped down the other side of the hill, where a white SUV waited on the
shoulder of the road. Argus followed, jingling his car keys.
I picked up the flying shoes and had a sudden bad feeling. I looked at Chiron.
‘I won’t be able to use these, will I?’
He shook his head. ‘Luke meant well, Percy. But taking to the air… that
would not be wise for you.’
I nodded, disappointed, but then I got an idea. ‘Hey, Grover. You want a
magic item?’
His eyes lit up. ‘Me?’
Pretty soon we’d laced the sneakers over his fake feet, and the world’s first
flying goat boy was ready for launch.
‘Maia!’ he shouted.
He got off the ground okay, but then fell over sideways so his backpack
dragged through the grass. The winged shoes kept bucking up and down like tiny
broncos.
‘Practice,’ Chiron called after him. ‘You just need practice!’
‘Aaaaa!’ Grover went flying sideways down the hill like a possessed lawn
mower, heading towards the van.
Before I could follow, Chiron caught my arm. ‘I should have trained you
better, Percy,’ he said. ‘If only I had more time. Hercules, Jason – they all got
more training.’
‘That’s okay. I just wish –’
I stopped myself because I was about to sound like a brat. I was wishing my
dad had given me a cool magic item to help on the quest, something as good as
Luke’s flying shoes, or Annabeth’s invisible cap.
‘What am I thinking?’ Chiron cried. ‘I can’t let you get away without this.’
He pulled a pen from his coat pocket and handed it to me. It was an ordinary
disposable ballpoint, black ink, removable cap. Probably cost thirty cents.
‘Gee,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
‘Percy, that’s a gift from your father. I’ve kept it for years, not knowing you
were who I was waiting for. But the prophecy is clear to me now. You are the
one.’
I remembered the field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, when I’d
vaporized Mrs Dodds. Chiron had thrown me a pen that turned into a sword.
Could this be…?
I took off the cap, and the pen grew longer and heavier in my hand. In half a
second, I held a shimmering bronze sword with a double-edged blade, a leatherwrapped grip and a flat hilt riveted with gold studs. It was the first weapon that
actually felt balanced in my hand.
‘The sword has a long and tragic history that we need not go into,’ Chiron told
me. ‘Its name is Anaklusmos.’
‘“Riptide”,’ I translated, surprised the Ancient Greek came so easily.
‘Use it only for emergencies,’ Chiron said, ‘and only against monsters. No
hero should harm mortals unless absolutely necessary, of course, but this sword
wouldn’t harm them in any case.’
I looked at the wickedly sharp blade. ‘What do you mean it wouldn’t harm
mortals? How could it not?’
‘The sword is celestial bronze. Forged by the Cyclopes, tempered in the heart
of Mount Etna, cooled in the River Lethe. It’s deadly to monsters, to any
creature from the Underworld, provided they don’t kill you first. But the blade
will pass through mortals like an illusion. They simply are not important enough
for the blade to kill. And I should warn you: as a demigod, you can be killed by
either celestial or normal weapons. You are twice as vulnerable.’
‘Good to know.’
‘Now recap the pen.’
I touched the pen cap to the sword tip and instantly Riptide shrank to a
ballpoint pen again. I tucked it in my pocket, a little nervous, because I was
famous for losing pens at school.
‘You can’t,’ Chiron said.
‘Can’t what?’
‘Lose the pen,’ he said. ‘It is enchanted. It will always reappear in your
pocket. Try it.’
I was wary, but I threw the pen as far as I could down the hill and watched it
disappear in the grass.
‘It may take a few moments,’ Chiron told me. ‘Now check your pocket.’
Sure enough, the pen was there.
‘Okay, that’s extremely cool,’ I admitted. ‘But what if a mortal sees me pulling
out a sword?’
Chiron smiled. ‘Mist is a powerful thing, Percy.’
‘Mist?’
‘Yes. Read The Iliad. It’s full of references to the stuff. Whenever divine or
monstrous elements mix with the mortal world, they generate Mist, which
obscures the vision of humans. You will see things just as they are, being a halfblood, but humans will interpret things quite differently. Remarkable, really, the
lengths to which humans will go to fit things into their version of reality.’
I put Riptide back in my pocket.
For the first time, the quest felt real. I was actually leaving Half-Blood Hill. I
was heading west with no adult supervision, no backup plan, not even a cell
phone. (Chiron said cell phones were traceable by monsters; if we used one, it
would be worse than sending up a flare.) I had no weapon stronger than a sword
to fight off monsters and reach the Land of the Dead.
‘Chiron…’ I said. ‘When you say the gods are immortal… I mean, there was a
time before them, right?’
‘Four ages before them, actually. The Time of the Titans was the Fourth Age,
sometimes called the Golden Age, which is definitely a misnomer. This, the time
of Western civilization and the rule of Zeus, is the Fifth Age’.
‘So what was it like… before the gods?’
Chiron pursed his lips. ‘Even I am not old enough to remember that, child, but
I know it was a time of darkness and savagery for mortals. Kronos, the lord of
the Titans, called his reign the Golden Age because men lived innocent and free
of all knowledge. But that was mere propaganda. The Titan king cared nothing
for your kind except as appetizers or a source of cheap entertainment. It was
only in the early reign of Lord Zeus, when Prometheus the good Titan brought
fire to mankind, that your species began to progress, and even then Prometheus
was branded a radical thinker. Zeus punished him severely, as you may recall. Of
course, eventually the gods warmed to humans, and Western civilization was
born.’
‘But the gods can’t die now, right? I mean, as long as Western civilization is
alive, they’re alive. So… even if I failed, nothing could happen so bad it would
mess up everything, right?’
Chiron gave me a melancholy smile. ‘No one knows how long the Age of the
West will last, Percy. The gods are immortal, yes. But then, so were the Titans.
They still exist, locked away in their various prisons, forced to endure endless
pain and punishment, reduced in power, but still very much alive. May the Fates
forbid that the gods should ever suffer such a doom, or that we should ever
return to the darkness and chaos of the past. All we can do, child, is follow our
destiny.’
‘Our destiny… assuming we know what that is.’
‘Relax,’ Chiron told me. ‘Keep a clear head. And remember, you may be
about to prevent the biggest war in human history.’
‘Relax,’ I said. ‘I’m very relaxed.’
When I got to the bottom of the hill, I looked back. Under the pine tree that
used to be Thalia, daughter of Zeus, Chiron was now standing in full horse-man
form, holding his bow high in salute. Just your typical summer-camp send-off by
your typical centaur.
***
Argus drove us out of the countryside and into western Long Island. It felt weird
to be on a highway again, Annabeth and Grover sitting next to me as if we were
normal carpoolers. After two weeks at Half-Blood Hill, the real world seemed
like a fantasy. I found myself staring at every McDonald’s, every kid in the back
of his parents’ car, every billboard and shopping mall.
‘So far so good,’ I told Annabeth. ‘Ten miles and not a single monster.’
She gave me an irritated look. ‘It’s bad luck to talk that way, seaweed brain.’
‘Remind me again – why do you hate me so much?’
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Could’ve fooled me.’
She folded her cap of invisibility. ‘Look… we’re just not supposed to get
along, okay? Our parents are rivals.’
‘Why?’
She sighed. ‘How many reasons do you want? One time my mom caught
Poseidon with his girlfriend in Athena’s temple, which is hugely disrespectful.
Another time, Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god for the city of
Athens. Your dad created some stupid saltwater spring for his gift. My mom
created the olive tree. The people saw that her gift was better, so they named the
city after her.’
‘They must really like olives.’
‘Oh, forget it.’
‘Now, if she’d invented pizza – that I could understand.’
‘I said, forget it!’
In the front seat, Argus smiled. He didn’t say anything, but one blue eye on
the back of his neck winked at me.
Traffic slowed us down in Queens. By the time we got into Manhattan it was
sunset and starting to rain.
Argus dropped us at the Greyhound Station on the Upper East Side, not far
from my mom and Gabe’s apartment. Taped to a mailbox was a soggy flyer with
my picture on it: HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BOY?
I ripped it down before Annabeth and Grover could notice.
Argus unloaded our bags, made sure we got our bus tickets, then drove away,
the eye on the back of his hand opening to watch us as he pulled out of the
parking lot.
I thought about how close I was to my old apartment. On a normal day, my
mom would be home from the candy store by now. Smelly Gabe was probably
up there right now, playing poker, not even missing her.
Grover shouldered his backpack. He gazed down the street in the direction I
was looking. ‘You want to know why she married him, Percy?’
I stared at him. ‘Were you reading my mind or something?’
‘Just your emotions.’ He shrugged. ‘Guess I forgot to tell you satyrs can do
that. You were thinking about your mom and your stepdad, right?’
I nodded, wondering what else Grover might’ve forgotten to tell me.
‘Your mom married Gabe for you,’ Grover told me. ‘You call him “Smelly”,
but you’ve got no idea. The guy has this aura… Yuck. I can smell him from here.
I can smell traces of him on you, and you haven’t been near him for a fortnight.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Where’s the nearest shower?’
‘You should be grateful, Percy. Your stepfather smells so repulsively human
he could mask the presence of any demigod. As soon as I took a whiff inside his
Camaro, I knew: Gabe has been covering your scent for years. If you hadn’t
lived with him every summer, you probably would’ve been found by monsters a
long time ago. Your mom stayed with him to protect you. She was a smart lady.
She must’ve loved you a lot to put up with that guy – if that makes you feel any
better.’
It didn’t, but I forced myself not to show it. I’ll see her again, I thought. She
isn’t gone.
I wondered if Grover could still read my emotions, mixed up as they were. I
was glad he and Annabeth were with me, but I felt guilty that I hadn’t been
straight with them. I hadn’t told them the real reason I’d said yes to this crazy
quest.
The truth was, I didn’t care about retrieving Zeus’s lightning bolt, or saving
the world, or even helping my father out of trouble. The more I thought about it,
I resented Poseidon for never visiting me, never helping my mom, never even
sending a lousy child-support cheque. He’d only claimed me because he needed
a job done.
All I cared about was my mom. Hades had taken her unfairly, and Hades was
going to give her back.
You will be betrayed by one who calls you a friend, the Oracle whispered in
my mind. You will fail to save what matters most in the end.
Shut up, I told it.
The rain kept coming down.
We got restless waiting for the bus and decided to play some Hacky Sack with
one of Grover’s apples. Annabeth was unbelievable. She could bounce the apple
off her knee, her elbow, her shoulder, whatever. I wasn’t too bad myself.
The game ended when I tossed the apple towards Grover and it got too close
to his mouth. In one mega goat bite, our Hacky Sack disappeared – core, stem
and all.
Grover blushed. He tried to apologize, but Annabeth and I were too busy
cracking up.
Finally the bus came. As we stood in line to board, Grover started looking
around, sniffing the air like he smelled his favourite school cafeteria delicacy –
enchiladas.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ he said tensely. ‘Maybe it’s nothing.’
But I could tell it wasn’t nothing. I started looking over my shoulder, too.
I was relieved when we finally got on board and found seats together in the
back of the bus. We stowed our backpacks. Annabeth kept slapping her Yankees
cap nervously against her thigh.
As the last passengers got on, Annabeth clamped her hand onto my knee.
‘Percy.’
An old lady had just boarded the bus. She wore a crumpled velvet dress, lace
gloves and a shapeless orange-knit hat that shadowed her face, and she carried a
big paisley purse. When she tilted her head up, her black eyes glittered, and my
heart skipped a beat.
It was Mrs Dodds. Older, more withered, but definitely the same evil face.
I scrunched down in my seat.
Behind her came two more old ladies: one in a green hat, one in a purple hat.
Otherwise they looked exactly like Mrs Dodds – same gnarled hands, paisley
handbags, wrinkled velvet dresses. Triplet demon grandmothers.
They sat in the front row, right behind the driver. The two on the aisle crossed
their legs over the walkway, making an X. It was casual enough, but it sent a
clear message: nobody leaves.
The bus pulled out of the station, and we headed through the slick streets of
Manhattan. ‘She didn’t stay dead long,’ I said, trying to keep my voice from
quivering. ‘I thought you said they could be dispelled for a lifetime.’
‘I said if you’re lucky,’ Annabeth said. ‘You’re obviously not.’
‘All three of them,’ Grover whimpered. ‘Di immortales!’
‘It’s okay,’ Annabeth said, obviously thinking hard. ‘The Furies. The three
worst monsters from the Underworld. No problem. No problem. We’ll just slip
out the windows.’
‘They don’t open,’ Grover moaned.
‘A back exit?’ she suggested.
There wasn’t one. Even if there had been, it wouldn’t have helped. By that
time, we were on Ninth Avenue, heading for the Lincoln Tunnel.
‘They won’t attack us with witnesses around,’ I said. ‘Will they?’
‘Mortals don’t have good eyes,’ Annabeth reminded me. ‘Their brains can
only process what they see through the Mist.’
‘They’ll see three old ladies killing us, won’t they?’
She thought about it. ‘Hard to say. But we can’t count on mortals for help.
Maybe an emergency exit in the roof…?’
We hit the Lincoln Tunnel, and the bus went dark except for the running lights
down the aisle. It was eerily quiet without the sound of the rain.
Mrs Dodds got up. In a flat voice, as if she’d rehearsed it, she announced to
the whole bus: ‘I need to use the restroom.’
‘So do I,’ said the second sister.
‘So do I,’ said the third sister.
They all started coming down the aisle.
‘I’ve got it,’ Annabeth said. ‘Percy, take my hat.’
‘What?’
‘You’re the one they want. Turn invisible and go up the aisle. Let them pass
you. Maybe you can get to the front and get away.’
‘But you guys –’
‘There’s an outside chance they might not notice us,’ Annabeth said. ‘You’re a
son of one of the Big Three. Your smell might be overpowering.’
‘I can’t just leave you.’
‘Don’t worry about us,’ Grover said. ‘Go!’
My hands trembled. I felt like a coward, but I took the Yankees cap and put it
on.
When I looked down, my body wasn’t there any more.
I started creeping up the aisle. I managed to get up ten rows, then duck into an
empty seat just as the Furies walked past.
Mrs Dodds stopped, sniffing, and looked straight at me. My heart was
pounding.
Apparently she didn’t see anything. She and her sisters kept going.
I was free. I made it to the front of the bus. We were almost through the
Lincoln Tunnel now. I was about to press the emergency stop button when I
heard hideous wailing from the back row.
The old ladies were not old ladies any more. Their faces were still the same –
I guess those couldn’t get any uglier – but their bodies had shrivelled into
leathery brown hag bodies with bat’s wings and hands and feet like gargoyle
claws. Their handbags had turned into fiery whips.
The Furies surrounded Grover and Annabeth, lashing their whips, hissing:
‘Where is it? Where?’
The other people on the bus were screaming, cowering in their seats. They
saw something, all right.
‘He’s not here!’ Annabeth yelled. ‘He’s gone!’
The Furies raised their whips.
Annabeth drew her bronze knife. Grover grabbed a tin can from his snack bag
and prepared to throw it.
What I did next was so impulsive and dangerous I should’ve been named
ADHD poster child of the year.
The bus driver was distracted, trying to see what was going on in his rearview
mirror.
Still invisible, I grabbed the wheel from him and jerked it to the left.
Everybody howled as they were thrown to the right, and I heard what I hoped
was the sound of three Furies smashing against the windows.
‘Hey!’ the driver yelled. ‘Hey – whoa!’
We wrestled for the wheel. The bus slammed against the side of the tunnel,
grinding metal, throwing sparks a mile behind us.
We careened out of the Lincoln Tunnel and back into the rainstorm, people
and monsters tossed around the bus, cars ploughed aside like bowling pins.
Somehow the driver found an exit. We shot off the highway, through half a
dozen traffic lights, and ended up barrelling down one of those New Jersey rural
roads where you can’t believe there’s so much nothing right across the river from
New York. There were woods to our left, the Hudson River to our right and the
driver seemed to be veering towards the river.
Another great idea: I hit the emergency brake.
The bus wailed, spun a full circle on the wet tar and crashed into the trees. The
emergency lights came on. The door flew open. The bus driver was the first one
out, the passengers yelling as they stampeded after him. I stepped into the
driver’s seat and let them pass.
The Furies regained their balance. They lashed their whips at Annabeth while
she waved her knife and yelled in Ancient Greek, telling them to back off.
Grover threw tin cans.
I looked at the open doorway. I was free to go, but I couldn’t leave my friends.
I took off the invisible cap. ‘Hey!’
The Furies turned, baring their yellow fangs at me, and the exit suddenly
sounded like an excellent idea. Mrs Dodds stalked up the aisle, just as she used
to do in class, about to deliver my F- maths test. Every time she flicked her
whip, red flames danced along the barbed leather.
Her two ugly sisters hopped on top of the seats on either side of her and
crawled towards me like huge nasty lizards.
‘Perseus Jackson,’ Mrs Dodds said, in an accent that was definitely from
somewhere further south than Georgia. ‘You have offended the gods. You shall
die.’
‘I liked you better as a maths teacher,’ I told her.
She growled.
Annabeth and Grover moved up behind the Furies cautiously, looking for an
opening.
I took the ballpoint pen out of my pocket and uncapped it. Riptide elongated
into a shimmering double-edged sword.
The Furies hesitated.
Mrs Dodds had felt Riptide’s blade before. She obviously didn’t like seeing it
again.
‘Submit now,’ she hissed. ‘And you will not suffer eternal torment.’
‘Nice try,’ I told her.
‘Percy, look out!’ Annabeth cried.
Mrs Dodds lashed her whip around my sword hand while the Furies on the
either side lunged at me.
My hand felt like it was wrapped in molten lead, but I managed not to drop
Riptide. I struck the Fury on the left with its hilt, sending her toppling backwards
into a seat. I turned and sliced the Fury on the right. As soon as the blade
connected with her neck, she screamed and exploded into dust. Annabeth got
Mrs Dodds in a wrestler’s hold and yanked her backwards while Grover ripped
the whip out of her hands.
‘Ow!’ he yelled. ‘Ow! Hot! Hot!’
The Fury I’d hilt-slammed came at me again, talons ready, but I swung
Riptide and she broke open like a piñata.
Mrs Dodds was trying to get Annabeth off her back. She kicked, clawed,
hissed and bit, but Annabeth held on while Grover got Mrs Dodds’s legs tied up
in her own whip. Finally they both shoved her backwards into the aisle. Mrs
Dodds tried to get up, but she didn’t have room to flap her bat wings, so she kept
falling down.
‘Zeus will destroy you!’ she promised. ‘Hades will have your soul!’
‘Braccas meas vescimini!’ I yelled.
I wasn’t sure where the Latin came from. I think it meant ‘Eat my pants!’
Thunder shook the bus. The hair rose on the back of my neck.
‘Get out!’ Annabeth yelled at me. ‘Now!’ I didn’t need any encouragement.
We rushed outside and found the other passengers wandering around in a
daze, arguing with the driver, or running around in circles yelling, ‘We’re going
to die!’ A Hawaiian-shirted tourist with a camera snapped my photograph before
I could recap my sword.
‘Our bags!’ Grover realized. ‘We left our –’
BOOOOOM!
The windows of the bus exploded as the passengers ran for cover. Lightning
shredded a huge crater in the roof, but an angry wail from inside told me Mrs
Dodds was not yet dead.
‘Run!’ Annabeth said. ‘She’s calling for reinforcements! We have to get out of
here!’
We plunged into the woods as the rain poured down, the bus in flames behind
us and nothing but darkness ahead.
11
We Visit the Garden Gnome Emporium
In a way, it’s nice to know there are Greek gods out there, because you have
somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you’re walking
away from a bus that’s just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by
lightning, and it’s raining on top of everything else, most people might think
that’s just really bad luck; when you’re a half-blood, you understand that some
divine force really is trying to mess up your day.
So there we were, Annabeth and Grover and I, walking through the woods on
the New Jersey riverbank, the glow of New York City making the night sky
yellow behind us and the smell of the Hudson reeking in our noses.
Grover was shivering and braying, his big goat eyes turned slit-pupilled and
full of terror. ‘Three Kindly Ones. All three at once.’
I was pretty much in shock myself. The explosion of bus windows still rang in
my ears. But Annabeth kept pulling us along, saying: ‘Come on! The further
away we get, the better.’
‘All our money was back there,’ I reminded her. ‘Our food and clothes.
Everything.’
‘Well, maybe if you hadn’t decided to jump into the fight –’
‘What did you want me to do? Let you get killed?’
‘You didn’t need to protect me, Percy. I would’ve been fine.’
‘Sliced like sandwich bread,’ Grover put in, ‘but fine.’
‘Shut up, goat boy,’ said Annabeth.
Grover brayed mournfully. ‘Tin cans… a perfectly good bag of tin cans.’
We sloshed across mushy ground, through nasty twisted trees that smelled like
sour laundry.
After a few minutes, Annabeth fell into line next to me. ‘Look, I…’ Her voice
faltered. ‘I appreciate your coming back for us, okay? That was really brave.’
‘We’re a team, right?’
She was silent for a few more steps. ‘It’s just that if you died… aside from the
fact that it would really suck for you, it would mean the quest was over. This
may be my only chance to see the real world.’
The thunderstorm had finally let up. The city glow faded behind us, leaving us
in almost total darkness. I couldn’t see anything of Annabeth except a glint of
her blonde hair.
‘You haven’t left Camp Half-Blood since you were seven?’ I asked her.
‘No… only short field trips. My dad –’
‘The history professor.’
‘Yeah. It didn’t work out for me living at home. I mean, Camp Half-Blood is
my home.’ She was rushing her words out now, as if she were afraid somebody
might try to stop her. ‘At camp you train and train. And that’s all cool and
everything, but the real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you learn
whether you’re any good or not.’
If I didn’t know better, I could’ve sworn I heard doubt in her voice.
‘You’re pretty good with that knife,’ I said.
‘You think so?’
‘Anybody who can piggyback-ride a Fury is okay by me.’
I couldn’t really see, but I thought she might’ve smiled.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘maybe I should tell you… Something funny back on
the bus…’
Whatever she wanted to say was interrupted by a shrill toot˜toot˜toot, like the
sound of an owl being tortured.
‘Hey, my reed pipes still work!’ Grover cried. ‘If I could just remember a
“find path” song, we could get out of these woods!’
He puffed out a few notes, but the tune still sounded suspiciously like Hilary
Duff.
Instead of finding a path, I immediately slammed into a tree and got a nicesize knot on my head.
Add to the list of superpowers I did not have: infrared vision.
After tripping and cursing and generally feeling miserable for another mile or
so, I started to see light up ahead: the colours of a neon sign. I could smell food.
Fried, greasy, excellent food. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything unhealthy since
I’d arrived at Half-Blood Hill, where we lived on grapes, bread, cheese and
extra-lean-cut nymph-prepared barbecue. This boy needed a double
cheeseburger.
We kept walking until I saw a deserted two-lane road through the trees. On the
other side was a closed-down gas station, a tattered billboard for a 1990s movie
and one open business, which was the source of the neon light and the good
smell.
It wasn’t a fast-food restaurant like I’d hoped. It was one of those weird
roadside curio shops that sell lawn flamingos and wooden Indians and cement
grizzly bears and stuff like that. The main building was a long, low warehouse,
surrounded by acres of statuary. The neon sign above the gate was impossible for
me to read, because if there’s anything worse for my dyslexia than regular
English, it’s red cursive neon English.
To me, it looked like: ATNYU MES GDERAN GOMEN MEPROIUM.
‘What the heck does that say?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Annabeth said.
She loved reading so much, I’d forgotten she was dyslexic, too.
Grover translated: ‘Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium.’
Flanking the entrance, as advertised, were two cement garden gnomes, ugly
bearded little runts, smiling and waving, as if they were about to get their picture
taken.
I crossed the street, following the smell of the hamburgers.
‘Hey…’ Grover warned.
‘The lights are on inside,’ Annabeth said. ‘Maybe it’s open.’
‘Snack bar,’ I said wistfully.
‘Snack bar,’ she agreed.
‘Are you two crazy?’ Grover said. ‘This place is weird.’
We ignored him.
The front garden was a forest of statues: cement animals, cement children,
even a cement satyr playing the pipes, which gave Grover the creeps.
‘Bla-ha-ha!’ he bleated. ‘Looks like my Uncle Ferdinand!’
We stopped at the warehouse door.
‘Don’t knock,’ Grover pleaded. ‘I smell monsters.’
‘Your nose is clogged up from the Furies,’ Annabeth told him. ‘All I smell is
burgers. Aren’t you hungry?’
‘Meat!’ he said scornfully. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’
‘You eat cheese enchiladas and aluminium cans,’ I reminded him.
‘Those are vegetables. Come on. Let’s leave. These statues are… looking at
me.’
Then the door creaked open, and standing in front of us was a tall Middle
Eastern woman – at least, I assumed she was Middle Eastern, because she wore a
long black gown that covered everything but her hands, and her head was
completely veiled. Her eyes glinted behind a curtain of black gauze, but that was
about all I could make out. Her coffee-coloured hands looked old, but wellmanicured and elegant, so I imagined she was a grandmother who had once been
a beautiful lady.
Her accent sounded vaguely Middle Eastern, too. She said, ‘Children, it is too
late to be out all alone. Where are your parents?’
‘They’re… um…’ Annabeth started to say.
‘We’re orphans,’ I said.
‘Orphans?’ the woman said. The word sounded alien in her mouth. ‘But, my
dears! Surely not!’
‘We got separated from our caravan,’ I said. ‘Our circus caravan. The
ringmaster told us to meet him at the gas station if we got lost, but he may have
forgotten, or maybe he meant a different gas station. Anyway, we’re lost. Is that
food I smell?’
‘Oh, my dears,’ the woman said. ‘You must come in, poor children. I am
Aunty Em. Go straight through to the back of the warehouse, please. There is a
dining area.’
We thanked her and went inside.
Annabeth muttered to me, ‘Circus caravan?’
‘Always have a strategy, right?’
‘Your head is full of kelp.’
The warehouse was filled with more statues – people in all different poses,
wearing all different outfits and with different expressions on their faces. I was
thinking you’d have to have a pretty huge garden to fit even one of these statues,
because they were all life-size. But mostly I was thinking about food.
Go ahead, call me an idiot for walking into a strange lady’s shop like that just
because I was hungry, but I do impulsive stuff sometimes. Plus, you’ve never
smelled Aunty Em’s burgers. The aroma was like laughing gas in the dentist’s
chair – it made everything else go away. I barely noticed Grover’s nervous
whimpers, or the way the statues’ eyes seemed to follow me, or the fact that
Aunty Em had locked the door behind us.
All I cared about was finding the dining area. And, sure enough, there it was
at the back of the warehouse, a fast-food counter with a grill, a soda fountain, a
pretzel heater and a nacho cheese dispenser. Everything you could want, plus a
few steel picnic tables out front.
‘Please, sit down,’ Aunty Em said.
‘Awesome,’ I said.
‘Um,’ Grover said reluctantly, ‘we don’t have any money, ma’am.’
Before I could jab him in the ribs, Aunty Em said, ‘No, no, children. No
money. This is a special case, yes? It is my treat, for such nice orphans.’
‘Thank you, ma’am,’ Annabeth said.
Aunty Em stiffened, as if Annabeth had done something wrong, but then the
old woman relaxed just as quickly, so I figured it must’ve been my imagination.
‘Quite all right, Annabeth,’ she said. ‘You have such beautiful grey eyes,
child.’ Only later did I wonder how she knew Annabeth’s name, even though we
had never introduced ourselves.
Our hostess disappeared behind the snack counter and started cooking. Before
we knew it, she’d brought us plastic trays heaped with double cheeseburgers,
vanilla shakes and XXL servings of French fries.
I was halfway through my burger before I remembered to breathe.
Annabeth slurped her shake.
Grover picked at the fries, and eyed the tray’s waxed paper liner as if he might
go for that, but he still looked too nervous to eat.
‘What’s that hissing noise?’ he asked.
I listened, but didn’t hear anything. Annabeth shook her head.
‘Hissing?’ Aunty Em asked. ‘Perhaps you hear the deep-fryer oil. You have
keen ears, Grover.’
‘I take vitamins. For my ears.’
‘That’s admirable,’ she said. ‘But please, relax.’
Aunty Em ate nothing. She hadn’t taken off her headdress, even to cook, and
now she sat forward and interlaced her fingers and watched us eat. It was a little
unsettling, having someone stare at me when I couldn’t see her face, but I was
feeling satisfied after the burger, and a little sleepy, and I figured the least I could
do was try to make small talk with our hostess.
‘So, you sell gnomes,’ I said, trying to sound interested.
‘Oh, yes,’ ‘Aunty Em said. And animals. And people. Anything for the
garden. Custom orders. Statuary is very popular, you know.’
‘A lot of business on this road?’
‘Not so much, no. Since the highway was built… most cars, they do not go
this way now. I must cherish every customer I get.’
My neck tingled, as if somebody else was looking at me. I turned, but it was
just a statue of a young girl holding an Easter basket. The detail was incredible,
much better than you see in most garden statues. But something was wrong with
her face. It looked as if she were startled, or even terrified.
‘Ah,’ Aunty Em said sadly. ‘You notice some of my creations do not turn out
well. They are marred. They do not sell. The face is the hardest to get right.
Always the face.’
‘You make these statues yourself?’ I asked.
‘Oh, yes. Once upon a time, I had two sisters to help me in the business, but
they have passed on, and Aunty Em is alone. I have only my statues. This is why
I make them, you see. They are my company.’ The sadness in her voice sounded
so deep and so real that I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
Annabeth had stopped eating. She sat forward and said, ‘Two sisters?’
‘It’s a terrible story,’ Aunty Em said. ‘Not one for children, really. You see,
Annabeth, a bad woman was jealous of me, long ago, when I was young. I had
a… a boyfriend, you know, and this bad woman was determined to break us
apart. She caused a terrible accident. My sisters stayed by me. They shared my
bad fortune as long as they could, but eventually they passed on. They faded
away. I alone have survived, but at a price. Such a price.’
I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I felt bad for her. My eyelids kept getting
heavier, my full stomach making me sleepy. Poor old lady. Who would want to
hurt somebody so nice?
‘Percy?’ Annabeth was shaking me to get my attention. ‘Maybe we should go.
I mean, the ringmaster will be waiting.’
She sounded tense. I wasn’t sure why. Grover was eating the waxed paper off
the tray now, but if Aunty Em found that strange, she didn’t say anything.
‘Such beautiful grey eyes,’ Aunty Em told Annabeth again. ‘My, yes, it has
been a long time since I’ve seen grey eyes like those.’
She reached out as if to stroke Annabeth’s cheek, but Annabeth stood up
abruptly.
‘We really should go.’
‘Yes!’ Grover swallowed his waxed paper and stood up. ‘The ringmaster is
waiting! Right!’
I didn’t want to leave. I felt full and content. Aunty Em was so nice. I wanted
to stay with her a while.
‘Please, dears,’ Aunty Em pleaded. ‘I so rarely get to be with children. Before
you go, won’t you at least sit for a pose?’
‘A pose?’ Annabeth asked warily.
‘A photograph. I will use it to model a new statue set. Children are so popular,
you see. Everyone loves children.’
Annabeth shifted her weight from foot to foot. ‘I don’t think we can, ma’am.
Come on, Percy –’
‘Sure we can,’ I said. I was irritated with Annabeth for being so bossy, so rude
to an old lady who’d just fed us for free. ‘It’s just a photo, Annabeth. What’s the
harm?’
‘Yes, Annabeth,’ the woman purred. ‘No harm.’
I could tell Annabeth didn’t like it, but she allowed Aunty Em to lead us back
out the front door, into the garden of statues.
Aunty Em directed us to a park bench next to the stone satyr. ‘Now,’ she said,
‘I’ll just position you correctly. The young girl in the middle, I think, and the two
young gentlemen on either side.’
‘Not much light for a photo,’ I remarked.
‘Oh, enough,’ Aunty Em said. ‘Enough for us to see each other, yes?’
‘Where’s your camera?’ Grover asked.
Aunty Em stepped back, as if to admire the shot. ‘Now, the face is the most
difficult. Can you smile for me please, everyone? A large smile?’
Grover glanced at the cement satyr next to him, and mumbled, ‘That sure does
look like Uncle Ferdinand.’
‘Grover,’ Aunty Em chastised, ‘look this way, dear.’
She still had no camera in her hands.
‘Percy –’ Annabeth said.
Some instinct warned me to listen to Annabeth, but I was fighting the sleepy
feeling, the comfortable lull that came from the food and the old lady’s voice.
‘I will just be a moment,’ Aunty Em said. ‘You know, I can’t see you very
well in this cursed veil…’
‘Percy, something’s wrong,’ Annabeth insisted.
‘Wrong?’ Aunty Em said, reaching up to undo the wrap around her head. ‘Not
at all, dear. I have such noble company tonight. What could be wrong?’
‘That is Uncle Ferdinand!’ Grover gasped.
‘Look away from her!’ Annabeth shouted. She whipped her Yankees cap on to
her head and vanished. Her invisible hands pushed Grover and me both off the
bench.
I was on the ground, looking at Aunt Em’s sandalled feet.
I could hear Grover scrambling off in one direction, Annabeth in another. But
I was too dazed to move.
Then I heard a strange, rasping sound above me. My eyes rose to Aunty Em’s
hands, which had turned gnarled and warty, with sharp bronze talons for
fingernails.
I almost looked higher, but somewhere off to my left Annabeth screamed,
‘No! Don’t!’
More rasping – the sound of tiny snakes, right above me, from… from about
where Aunty Em’s head would be.
‘Run!’ Grover bleated. I heard him racing across the gravel, yelling, ‘Maia!’
to kick-start his flying sneakers.
I couldn’t move. I stared at Aunty Em’s gnarled claws, and tried to fight the
groggy trance the old woman had put me in.
‘Such a pity to destroy a handsome young face,’ she told me soothingly. ‘Stay
with me, Percy. All you have to do is look up.’
I fought the urge to obey. Instead I looked to one side and saw one of those
glass spheres people put in gardens – a gazing ball. I could see Aunty Em’s dark
reflection in the orange glass; her headdress was gone, revealing her face as a
shimmering pale circle. Her hair was moving, writhing like serpents.
Aunty Em.
Aunty ‘M’.
How could I have been so stupid?
Think, I told myself. How did Medusa die in the myth?
But I couldn’t think. Something told me that in the myth Medusa had been
asleep when she was attacked by my namesake, Perseus. She wasn’t anywhere
near asleep now. If she wanted, she could take those talons right now and rake
open my face.
‘The Grey-Eyed One did this to me, Percy,’ Medusa said, and she didn’t sound
anything like a monster. Her voice invited me to look up, to sympathize with a
poor old grandmother. ‘Annabeth’s mother, the cursed Athena, turned me from a
beautiful woman into this.’
‘Don’t listen to her!’ Annabeth’s voice shouted, somewhere in the statuary.
‘Run, Percy!’
‘Silence!’ Medusa snarled. Then her voice modulated back to a comforting
purr. ‘You see why I must destroy the girl, Percy. She is my enemy’s daughter. I
shall crush her statue to dust. But you, dear Percy, you need not suffer.’
‘No,’ I muttered. I tried to make my legs move.
‘Do you really want to help the gods?’ Medusa asked. ‘Do you understand
what awaits you on this foolish quest, Percy? What will happen if you reach the
Underworld? Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better
off as a statue. Less pain. Less pain.’
‘Percy!’ Behind me, I heard a buzzing sound, like a ninety-kilogram
hummingbird in a nosedive. Grover yelled, ‘Duck!’
I turned, and there he was in the night sky, flying in from twelve o’clock with
his winged shoes fluttering – Grover, holding a tree branch the size of a baseball
bat. His eyes were shut tight, his head twitched from side to side. He was
navigating by ears and nose alone.
‘Duck!’ he yelled again. ‘I’ll get her!’
That finally jolted me into action. Knowing Grover, I was sure he’d miss
Medusa and nail me. I dove to one side.
Thwack!
At first I figured it was the sound of Grover hitting a tree. Then Medusa
roared with rage.
‘You miserable satyr,’ she snarled. ‘I’ll add you to my collection!’
‘That was for Uncle Ferdinand!’ Grover yelled back.
I scrambled away and hid in the statuary while Grover swooped down for
another pass.
Ker-whack!
‘Arrgh!’ Medusa yelled, her snake-hair hissing and spitting.
Right next to me, Annabeth’s voice said, ‘Percy!’
I jumped so high my feet nearly cleared a garden gnome. ‘Jeez! Don’t do
that!’
Annabeth took off her Yankees cap and became visible. ‘You have to cut her
head off’
‘What? Are you crazy? Let’s get out of here.’
‘Medusa is a menace. She’s evil. I’d kill her myself, but…’ Annabeth
swallowed, as if she were about to make a difficult admission. ‘But you’ve got
the better weapon. Besides, I’d never get close to her. She’d slice me to bits
because of my mother. You – you’ve got a chance.’
‘What? I can’t –’
‘Look, do you want her turning more innocent people into statues?’
She pointed to a pair of statue lovers, a man and a woman with their arms
around each other, turned to stone by the monster.
Annabeth grabbed a green gazing ball from a nearby pedestal. ‘A polished
shield would be better.’ She studied the sphere critically. ‘The convexity will
cause some distortion. The reflection’s size should be off by a factor of –’
‘Would you speak English?’
‘I am!’ She tossed me the glass ball. ‘Just look at her in the glass. Never look
at her directly.’
‘Hey, guys!’ Grover yelled somewhere above us. ‘I think she’s unconscious!’
‘Roooaaarrr!’
‘Maybe not,’ Grover corrected. He went in for another pass with the tree
branch.
‘Hurry,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Grover’s got a great nose, but he’ll eventually
crash.’
I took out my pen and uncapped it. The bronze blade of Riptide elongated in
my hand.
I followed the hissing and spitting sounds of Medusa’s hair.
I kept my eyes locked on the gazing ball so I would only glimpse Medusa’s
reflection, not the real thing. Then, in the green tinted glass, I saw her.
Grover was coming in for another turn at bat, but this time he flew a little too
low. Medusa grabbed the stick and pulled him off course. He tumbled through
the air and crashed into the arms of a stone grizzly bear with a painful
‘Ummphh!’
Medusa was about to lunge at him when I yelled, ‘Hey!’
I advanced on her, which wasn’t easy, holding a sword and a glass ball. If she
charged, I’d have a hard time defending myself.
But she let me approach – ten metres, five metres.
I could see the reflection of her face now. Surely it wasn’t really that ugly. The
green swirls of the gazing ball must be distorting it, making it look worse.
‘You wouldn’t harm an old woman, Percy,’ she crooned. ‘I know you
wouldn’t.’
I hesitated, fascinated by the face I saw reflected in the glass – the eyes that
seemed to burn straight through the green tint, making my arms go weak.
From the cement grizzly, Grover moaned, ‘Percy, don’t listen to her!’
Medusa cackled. ‘Too late.’
She lunged at me with her talons.
I slashed up with my sword, heard a sickening shlock!, then a hiss like wind
rushing out of a cavern – the sound of a monster disintegrating.
Something fell to the ground next to my foot. It took all my willpower not to
look. I could feel warm ooze soaking into my sock, little dying snake heads
tugging at my shoelaces.
‘Oh, yuck,’ Grover said. His eyes were still tightly closed, but I guess he could
hear the thing gurgling and steaming. ‘Mega-yuck.’
Annabeth came up next to me, her eyes fixed on the sky. She was holding
Medusa’s black veil. She said, ‘Don’t move.’
Very, very carefully, without looking down, she knelt and draped the
monster’s head in black cloth, then picked it up. It was still dripping green juice.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked me, her voice trembling.
‘Yeah,’ I decided, though I felt like throwing up my double cheeseburger.
‘Why didn’t… why didn’t the head evaporate?’
‘Once you sever it, it becomes a spoil of war,’ she said. ‘Same as your
Minotaur horn. But don’t unwrap the head. It can still petrify you.’
Grover moaned as he climbed down from the grizzly statue. He had a big welt
on his forehead. His green rasta cap hung from one of his little goat horns, and
his fake feet had been knocked off his hooves. The magic sneakers were flying
aimlessly around his head.
‘The Red Baron,’ I said. ‘Good job, man.’
He managed a bashful grin. ‘That really was not fun, though. Well, the hittingher-with-a-stick part, that was fun. But crashing into a concrete bear? Not fun.’
He snatched his shoes out of the air. I recapped my sword. Together, the three
of us stumbled back to the warehouse.
We found some old plastic grocery bags behind the snack counter and doublewrapped Medusa’s head. We plopped it on the table where we’d eaten dinner and
sat around it, too exhausted to speak.
Finally I said, ‘So we have Athena to thank for this monster?’
Annabeth flashed me an irritated look. ‘Your dad, actually. Don’t you
remember? Medusa was Poseidon’s girlfriend. They decided to meet in my
mother’s temple. That’s why Athena turned her into a monster. Medusa and her
two sisters who had helped her get into the temple, they became the three
gorgons. That’s why Medusa wanted to slice me up, but she wanted to preserve
you as a nice statue. She’s still sweet on your dad. You probably reminded her of
him.’
My face was burning. ‘Oh, so now it’s my fault we met Medusa.’
Annabeth straightened. In a bad imitation of my voice, she said: ‘ “It’s just a
photo, Annabeth. What’s the harm?” ’
‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘You’re impossible.’
‘You’re insufferable.’
‘You’re –’
‘Hey!’ Grover interrupted. ‘You two are giving me a migraine, and satyrs
don’t even get migraines. What are we going to do with the head?’
I stared at the thing. One little snake was hanging out of a hole in the plastic.
The words printed on the side of the bag said: WE APPRECIATE YOUR
BUSINESS!
I was angry, not just with Annabeth or her mom, but with all the gods for this
whole quest, for getting us blown off the road and in two major fights the very
first day out from camp. At this rate, we’d never make it to L.A. alive, much less
before the summer solstice.
What had Medusa said?
Do not be a pawn of the Olympians, my dear. You would be better off as a
statue.
I got up. ‘I’ll be back.’
‘Percy,’ Annabeth called after me. ‘What are you –’
I searched the back of the warehouse until I found Medusa’s office. Her
account book showed her six most recent sales, all shipments to the Underworld
to decorate Hades and Persephone’s garden. According to one freight bill, the
Underworld’s billing address was DOA Recording Studios, West Hollywood,
California. I folded up the bill and stuffed it in my pocket.
In the cash register I found twenty dollars, a few golden drachmas and some
packing slips for Hermes Overnight Express, each with a little leather bag
attached for coins. I rummaged around the rest of the office until I found the
right-size box.
I went back to the picnic table, packed up Medusa’s head, and filled out a
delivery slip:
The Gods
Mount Olympus
600th Floor,
Empire State Building
New York, NY
With best wishes,
PERCY JACKSON
‘They’re not going to like that,’ Grover warned. ‘They’ll think you’re
impertinent.’
I poured some golden drachmas in the pouch. As soon as I closed it, there was
a sound like a cash register. The package floated off the table and disappeared
with a pop!
‘I am impertinent,’ I said.
I looked at Annabeth, daring her to criticize.
She didn’t. She seemed resigned to the fact that I had a major talent for ticking
off the gods. ‘Come on,’ she muttered. ‘We need a new plan.’
12
We Get Advice from a Poodle
We were pretty miserable that night.
We camped out in the woods, a hundred metres from the main road, in a
marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground
was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.
We’d taken some food and blankets from Aunty Em’s, but we didn’t dare light
a fire to dry our damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough
excitement for one day. We didn’t want to attract anything else.
We decided to sleep in shifts. I volunteered to take first watch.
Annabeth curled up on the blankets and was snoring as soon as her head hit
the ground. Grover fluttered with his flying shoes to the lowest bough of a tree,
put his back to the trunk, and stared at the night sky.
‘Go ahead and sleep,’ I told him. ‘I’ll wake you if there’s trouble.’
He nodded, but still didn’t close his eyes. ‘It makes me sad, Percy.’
‘What does? The fact that you signed up for this stupid quest?’
‘No. This makes me sad.’ He pointed at all the garbage on the ground. ‘And
the sky. You can’t even see the stars. They’ve polluted the sky. This is a terrible
time to be a satyr.’
‘Oh, yeah. I guess you’d be an environmentalist.’
He glared at me. ‘Only a human wouldn’t be. Your species is clogging up the
world so fast… ah, never mind. It’s useless to lecture a human. At the rate things
are going, I’ll never find Pan.’
‘Pam? Like the cooking spray?’
‘Pan!’ he cried indignantly. ‘P-A-N. The great god Pan! What do you think I
want a searcher’s licence for?’
A strange breeze rustled through the clearing, temporarily overpowering the
stink of trash and muck. It brought the smell of berries and wildflowers and
clean rainwater, things that might’ve once been in these woods. Suddenly I was
nostalgic for something I’d never known.
‘Tell me about the search,’ I said.
Grover looked at me cautiously, as if he were afraid I was just making fun.
‘The God of Wild Places disappeared two thousand years ago,’ he told me. ‘A
sailor off the coast of Ephesos heard a mysterious voice crying out from the
shore, “Tell them that the great god Pan has died!” When humans heard the
news, they believed it. They’ve been pillaging Pan’s kingdom ever since. But for
the satyrs, Pan was our lord and master. He protected us and the wild places of
the earth. We refuse to believe that he died. In every generation, the bravest
satyrs pledge their lives to finding Pan. They search the earth, exploring all the
wildest places, hoping to find where he is hidden and wake him from his sleep.’
‘And you want to be a searcher.’
‘It’s my life’s dream,’ he said. ‘My father was a searcher. And my Uncle
Ferdinand… the statue you saw back there –’
‘Oh, right, sorry.’
Grover shook his head. ‘Uncle Ferdinand knew the risks. So did my dad. But
I’ll succeed. I’ll be the first searcher to return alive.’
‘Hang on – the first?’
Grover took his reed pipes out of his pocket. ‘No searcher has ever come
back. Once they set out, they disappear. They’re never seen alive again.’
‘Not once in two thousand years?’
‘No.’
‘And your dad? You have no idea what happened to him?’
‘None.’
‘But you still want to go,’ I said, amazed. ‘I mean, you really think you’ll be
the one to find Pan?’
‘I have to believe that, Percy. Every searcher does. It’s the only thing that
keeps us from despair when we look at what humans have done to the world. I
have to believe Pan can still be awakened.’
I stared at the orange haze of the sky and tried to understand how Grover
could pursue a dream that seemed so hopeless. Then again, was I any better?
‘How are we going to get into the Underworld?’ I asked him. ‘I mean, what
chance do we have against a god?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But back at Medusa’s, when you were searching
her office? Annabeth was telling me –’
‘Oh, I forgot. Annabeth will have a plan all figured out.’
‘Don’t be so hard on her, Percy. She’s had a tough life, but she’s a good
person. After all, she forgave me…’ His voice faltered.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Forgave you for what?’
Suddenly, Grover seemed very interested in playing notes on his pipes.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Your first keeper job was five years ago. Annabeth
has been at camp five years. She wasn’t… I mean, your first assignment that
went wrong –’
‘I can’t talk about it,’ Grover said, and his quivering lower lip suggested he’d
start crying if I pressed him. ‘But as I was saying, back at Medusas, Annabeth
and I agreed there’s something strange going on with this quest. Something isn’t
what it seems.’
‘Well, duh. I’m getting blamed for stealing a thunderbolt that Hades took.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Grover said. ‘The Fu – The Kindly Ones were sort
of holding back. Like Mrs Dodds at Yancy Academy… why did she wait so long
to try to kill you? Then on the bus, they just weren’t as aggressive as they
could’ve been.’
‘They seemed plenty aggressive to me.’
Grover shook his head. ‘They were screeching at us: “Where is it? Where?”’
‘Asking about me,’ I said.
‘Maybe… but Annabeth and I, we both got the feeling they weren’t asking
about a person. They said “Where is it?” They seemed to be asking about an
object.’
‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘I know. But if we’ve misunderstood something about this quest, and we only
have nine days to find the master bolt…’ He looked at me like he was hoping for
answers, but I didn’t have any.
I thought about what Medusa had said: I was being used by the gods. What lay
ahead of me was worse than petrification. ‘I haven’t been straight with you,’ I
told Grover. ‘I don’t care about the master bolt. I agreed to go to the Underworld
so I could bring back my mother.’
Grover blew a soft note on his pipes. ‘I know that, Percy. But are you sure
that’s the only reason?’
‘I’m not doing it to help my father. He doesn’t care about me. I don’t care
about him.’
Grover gazed down from his tree branch. ‘Look, Percy, I’m not as smart as
Annabeth. I’m not as brave as you. But I’m pretty good at reading emotions.
You’re glad your dad is alive. You feel good that he’s claimed you, and part of
you wants to make him proud. That’s why you mailed Medusa’s head to
Olympus. You wanted him to notice what you’d done.’
‘Yeah? Well maybe satyr emotions work differently than human emotions.
Because you’re wrong. I don’t care what he thinks.’
Grover pulled his feet up onto the branch. ‘Okay, Percy. Whatever.’
‘Besides, I haven’t done anything worth bragging about. We barely got out of
New York and we’re stuck here with no money and no way west.’
Grover looked at the night sky, like he was thinking about that problem. ‘How
about I take first watch, huh? You get some sleep.’
I wanted to protest, but he started to play Mozart, soft and sweet, and I turned
away, my eyes stinging. After a few bars of Piano Concerto no. 12, I was asleep.
In my dreams, I stood in a dark cavern before a gaping pit. Grey mist creatures
churned all around me, whispering rags of smoke that I somehow knew were the
spirits of the dead.
They tugged at my clothes, trying to pull me back, but I felt compelled to
walk forward to the very edge of the chasm.
Looking down made me dizzy.
The pit yawned so wide and was so completely black, I knew it must be
bottomless. Yet I had a feeling that something was trying to rise from the abyss,
something huge and evil.
The little hero, an amused voice echoed far down in the darkness. Too weak,
too young, but perhaps you will do.
The voice felt ancient – cold and heavy. It wrapped around me like sheets of
lead.
They have misled you, boy, it said. Barter with me. I will give you what you
want.
A shimmering image hovered over the void: my mother, frozen at the moment
she’d dissolved in a shower of gold. Her face was distorted with pain, as if the
Minotaur were still squeezing her neck. Her eyes looked directly at me,
pleading: Go!
I tried to cry out, but my voice wouldn’t work.
Cold laughter echoed from the chasm.
An invisible force pulled me forward. It would drag me into the pit unless I
stood firm.
Help me rise, boy. The voice became hungrier. Bring me the bolt. Strike a
blow against the treacherous gods!
The spirits of the dead whispered around me, No! Wake!
The image of my mother began to fade. The thing in the pit tightened its
unseen grip around me.
I realized it wasn’t interested in pulling me in. It was using me to pull itself
out
Good, it murmured. Good.
Wake! the dead whispered. Wake!
Someone was shaking me.
My eyes opened, and it was daylight.
‘Well,’ Annabeth said, ‘the zombie lives.’
I was trembling from the dream. I could still feel the grip of the chasm
monster around my chest. ‘How long was I asleep?’
‘Long enough for me to cook breakfast.’ Annabeth tossed me a bag of nachoflavoured corn chips from Aunty Em’s snack bar. ‘And Grover went exploring.
Look, he found a friend.’
My eyes had trouble focusing.
Grover was sitting cross-legged on a blanket with something fuzzy in his lap,
a dirty, unnaturally pink stuffed animal.
No. It wasn’t a stuffed animal. It was a pink poodle.
The poodle yapped at me suspiciously. Grover said, ‘No, he’s not.’
I blinked. ‘Are you… talking to that thing?’
The poodle growled.
‘This thing,’ Grover warned, ‘is our ticket west. Be nice to him.’
‘You can talk to animals?’
Grover ignored the question. ‘Percy, meet Gladiola. Gladiola, Percy.’
I stared at Annabeth, figuring she’d crack up at this practical joke they were
playing on me, but she looked deadly serious.
‘I’m not saying hello to a pink poodle,’ I said. ‘Forget it.’
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said. ‘I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the
poodle.’
The poodle growled.
I said hello to the poodle.
Grover explained that he’d come across Gladiola in the woods and they’d
struck up a conversation. The poodle had run away from a rich local family,
who’d posted a $200 reward for his return. Gladiola didn’t really want to go
back to his family, but he was willing to if it meant helping Grover.
‘How does Gladiola know about the reward?’ I asked.
‘He read the signs,’ Grover said. ‘Duh.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Silly me.’
‘So we turn in Gladiola,’ Annabeth explained in her best strategy voice, ‘we
get money and we buy tickets to Los Angeles. Simple.’
I thought about my dream – the whispering voices of the dead, the thing in the
chasm and my mother’s face, shimmering as it dissolved into gold. All that
might be waiting for me in the West.
‘Not another bus,’ I said warily.
‘No,’ Annabeth agreed.
She pointed downhill, towards train tracks I hadn’t been able to see last night
in the dark. ‘There’s an Amtrack station half a mile that way. According to
Gladiola, the westbound train leaves at noon.’
13
I Plunge to My Death
We spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers,
past amber waves of grain.
We weren’t attacked once, but I didn’t relax. I felt that we were travelling
around in a display case, being watched from above and maybe from below, that
something was waiting for the right opportunity.
I tried to keep a low profile because my name and picture were splattered over
the front pages of several East Coast newspapers. The Trenton Register-News
showed a photo taken by a tourist as I got off the Greyhound bus. I had a wild
look in my eyes. My sword was a metallic blur in my hands. It might’ve been a
baseball bat or a lacrosse stick.
The picture’s caption read:
Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wanted for questioning in the Long Island disappearance of
his mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where he accosted several
elderly female passengers. The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after
Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be travelling
with two teenage accomplices. His stepfather, Gabe Ugliano, has offered a cash reward for
information leading to his capture.
‘Don’t worry,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Mortal police could never find us.’ But she
didn’t sound so sure.
The rest of the day I spent alternately pacing the length of the train (because I
had a really hard time sitting still), or looking out the windows.
Once, I spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at
the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a
second-grader on a pony, caught my eye and waved. I looked around the
passenger car, but nobody else had noticed. The adult riders all had their faces
buried in laptop computers or magazines.
Another time, towards evening, I saw something huge moving through the
woods. I could’ve sworn it was a lion, except that lions don’t live wild in
America, and this thing was the size of a tank. Its fur glinted gold in the evening
light. Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.
Our reward money for returning Gladiola the poodle had only been enough to
purchase tickets as far as Denver. We couldn’t get berths in the sleeper car, so we
dozed in our seats. My neck got stiff. I tried not to drool in my sleep, since
Annabeth was sitting right next to me.
Grover kept snoring and bleating and waking me up. Once, he shuffled around
and his fake foot fell off. Annabeth and I had to stick it back on before any of the
other passengers noticed.
‘So,’ Annabeth asked me, once we’d got Grover’s trainer readjusted. ‘Who
wants your help?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When you were asleep just now, you mumbled, “I won’t help you.” Who
were you dreaming about?’
I was reluctant to say anything. It was the second time I’d dreamed about the
evil voice from the pit. But it bothered me so much I finally told her.
Annabeth was quiet for a long time. ‘That doesn’t sound like Hades. He
always appears on a black throne, and he never laughs.’
‘He offered my mother in trade. Who else could do that?’
‘I guess… if he meant, “Help me rise from the Underworld.” If he wants war
with the Olympians. But why ask you to bring him the master bolt if he already
has it?’
I shook my head, wishing I knew the answer. I thought about what Grover had
told me, that the Furies on the bus seemed to have been looking for something.
Where is it? Where?
Maybe Grover sensed my emotions. He snorted in his sleep, muttered
something about vegetables and turned his head.
Annabeth readjusted his cap so it covered his horns. ‘Percy, you can’t barter
with Hades. You know that, right? He’s deceitful, heartless and greedy. I don’t
care if his Kindly Ones weren’t as aggressive this time –’
‘This time?’ I asked. ‘You mean you’ve run into them before?’
Her hand crept up to her necklace. She fingered a glazed white bead painted
with the image of a pine tree, one of her clay end-of-summer tokens. ‘Let’s just
say I’ve got no love for the Lord of the Dead. You can’t be tempted to make a
deal for your mom’
‘What would you do if it was your dad?’
‘That’s easy,’ she said. ‘I’d leave him to rot.’
‘You’re not serious?’
Annabeth’s grey eyes fixed on me. She wore the same expression she’d worn
in the woods at camp, the moment she drew her sword against the hellhound.
‘My dad’s resented me since the day I was born, Percy,’ she said. ‘He never
wanted a baby. When he got me, he asked Athena to take me back and raise me
on Olympus because he was too busy with his work. She wasn’t happy about
that. She told him heroes had to be raised by their mortal parent.’
‘But how… I mean, I guess you weren’t born in a hospital…’
‘I appeared on my father’s doorstep, in a golden cradle, carried down from
Olympus by Zephyr the West Wind. You’d think my dad would remember that
as a miracle, right? Like, maybe he’d take some digital photos or something. But
he always talked about my arrival as if it were the most inconvenient thing that
had ever happened to him. When I was five he got married and totally forgot
about Athena. He got a “regular” mortal wife, and had two “regular” mortal kids,
and tried to pretend I didn’t exist.’
I stared out the train window. The lights of a sleeping town were drifting by. I
wanted to make Annabeth feel better, but I didn’t know how.
‘My mom married a really awful guy,’ I told her. ‘Grover said she did it to
protect me, to hide me in the scent of a human family. Maybe that’s what your
dad was thinking.’
Annabeth kept worrying at her necklace. She was pinching the gold college
ring that hung with the beads. It occurred to me that the ring must be her
father’s. I wondered why she wore it if she hated him so much.
‘He doesn’t care about me,’ she said. ‘His wife – my stepmom – treated me
like a freak. She wouldn’t let me play with her children. My dad went along with
her. Whenever something dangerous happened – you know, something with
monsters – they would both look at me resentfully, like, “How dare you put our
family at risk!” Finally, I took the hint. I wasn’t wanted. I ran away.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Same age as when I started camp. Seven.’
‘But… you couldn’t have got all the way to Half-Blood Hill by yourself’
‘Not alone, no. Athena watched over me, guided me towards help. I made a
couple of unexpected friends who took care of me, for a short time, anyway.’
I wanted to ask what happened, but Annabeth seemed lost in sad memories.
So I listened to the sound of Grover snoring and gazed out the train windows as
the dark fields of Ohio raced by.
Towards the end of our second day on the train, June 13, eight days before the
summer solstice, we passed through some golden hills and over the Mississippi
River into St Louis.
Annabeth craned her neck to see the Gateway Arch, which looked to me like a
huge shopping-bag handle stuck on the city.
‘I want to do that,’ she sighed.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Build something like that. You ever see the Parthenon, Percy?’
‘Only in pictures.’
‘Someday, I’m going to see it in person. I’m going to build the greatest
monument to the gods ever. Something that’ll last a thousand years.’
I laughed. ‘You? An architect?’
I don’t know why, but I found it funny. Just the idea of Annabeth trying to sit
quietly and draw all day.
Her cheeks flushed. ‘Yes, an architect. Athena expects her children to create
things, not just tear them down, like a certain god of earthquakes I could
mention.’
I watched the churning brown water of the Mississippi below.
‘Sorry,’ Annabeth said. ‘That was mean.’
‘Can’t we work together a little?’ I pleaded. ‘I mean, didn’t Athena and
Poseidon ever cooperate?’
Annabeth had to think about it. ‘I guess… the chariot,’ she said tentatively.
‘My mom invented it, but Poseidon created horses out of the crests of waves. So
they had to work together to make it complete.’
‘Then we can cooperate, too. Right?’
We rode into the city, Annabeth watching as the Arch disappeared behind a
hotel.
‘I suppose,’ she said at last.
We pulled into the Amtrak station downtown. The intercom told us we’d have
a three-hour stopover before departing for Denver.
Grover stretched. Before he was even fully awake, he said, ‘Food.’
‘Come on, goat boy,’ Annabeth said. ‘Sightseeing.’
‘Sightseeing?’
‘The Gateway Arch,’ she said. ‘This may be my only chance to ride to the top.
Are you coming or not?’
Grover and I exchanged looks.
I wanted to say no, but I figured that if Annabeth was going, we couldn’t very
well let her go alone.
Grover shrugged. ‘As long as there’s a snack bar without monsters.’
The Arch was about a mile from the train station. Late in the day the lines to get
in weren’t that long. We threaded our way through the underground museum,
looking at covered wagons and other junk from the 1800s. It wasn’t all that
thrilling, but Annabeth kept telling us interesting facts about how the Arch was
built, and Grover kept passing me jelly beans, so I was okay.
I kept looking around, though, at the other people in line. ‘You smell
anything?’ I murmured to Grover.
He took his nose out of the jelly-bean bag long enough to sniff.
‘Underground,’ he said distastefully. ‘Underground air always smells like
monsters. Probably doesn’t mean anything.’
But something felt wrong to me. I had a feeling we shouldn’t be here.
‘Guys,’ I said. ‘You know the gods’ symbols of power?’
Annabeth had been in the middle of reading about the construction equipment
used to build the Arch, but she looked over. ‘Yeah?’
‘Well, Hade –’
Grover cleared his throat. ‘We’re in a public place… You mean, our friend
downstairs?’
‘Um, right,’ I said. ‘Our friend way downstairs. Doesn’t he have a hat like
Annabeth’s?’
‘You mean the Helm of Darkness,’ Annabeth said. ‘Yeah, that’s his symbol of
power. I saw it next to his seat during the winter solstice council meeting.’
‘He was there?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘It’s the only time he’s allowed to visit Olympus – the darkest
day of the year. But his helmet is a lot more powerful than my invisibility hat, if
what I’ve heard is true…’
‘It allows him to become darkness,’ Grover confirmed. ‘He can melt into
shadow or pass through walls. He can’t be touched, or seen, or heard. And he
can radiate fear so intense it can drive you insane or stop your heart. Why do you
think all rational creatures fear the dark?’
‘But then… how do we know he’s not here right now, watching us?’ I asked.
Annabeth and Grover exchanged looks.
‘We don’t,’ Grover said.
‘Thanks, that makes me feel a lot better,’ said. ‘Got any blue jelly beans left?’
I’d almost mastered my jumpy nerves when I saw the tiny little elevator car
we were going to ride to the top of the Arch, and I knew I was in trouble. I hate
confined places. They make me nuts.
We got shoehorned into the car with this big fat lady and her dog, a Chihuahua
with a rhinestone collar. I figured maybe the dog was a seeing-eye Chihuahua,
because none of the guards said a word about it.
We started going up, inside the Arch. I’d never been in an elevator that went
in a curve, and my stomach wasn’t too happy about it.
‘No parents?’ the fat lady asked us.
She had beady eyes; pointy, coffee-stained teeth; a floppy denim hat, and a
denim dress that bulged so much she looked like a blue-jean blimp.
‘They’re below,’ Annabeth told her. ‘Scared of heights.’
‘Oh, the poor darlings.’
The Chihuahua growled. The woman said, ‘Now, now, sonny. Behave.’ The
dog had beady eyes like its owner, intelligent and vicious.
I said, ‘Sonny. Is that his name?’
‘No,’ the lady told me.
She smiled, as if that cleared everything up.
At the top of the Arch, the observation deck reminded me of a tin can with
carpeting. Rows of tiny windows looked out over the city on one side and the
river on the other. The view was okay, but if there’s anything I like less than a
confined space, its a confined space two hundred metres in the air. I was ready to
go pretty quick.
Annabeth kept talking about structural supports, and how she would’ve made
the windows bigger, and designed a see-through floor. She probably could’ve
stayed up there for hours, but luckily for me the park ranger announced that the
observation deck would be closing in a few minutes.
I steered Grover and Annabeth towards the exit, loaded them into the elevator
and I was about to get in myself when I realized there were already two other
tourists inside. No room for me.
The park ranger said, ‘Next car, sir.’
‘We’ll get out,’ Annabeth said. ‘Well wait with you.’
But that was going to mess everybody up and take even more time, so I said,
‘Naw, it’s okay. I’ll see you guys at the bottom.’
Grover and Annabeth both looked nervous, but they let the elevator door slide
shut. Their car disappeared down the ramp.
Now the only people left on the observation deck were me, a little boy with
his parents, the park ranger and the fat lady with her Chihuahua.
I smiled uneasily at the fat lady. She smiled back, her forked tongue flickering
between her teeth.
Wait a minute.
Forked tongue?
Before I could decide if I’d really seen that, her Chihuahua jumped down and
started yapping at me.
‘Now, now, sonny,’ the lady said. ‘Does this look like a good time? We have
all these nice people here.’
‘Doggie!’ said the little boy. ‘Look, a doggie!’
His parents pulled him back.
The Chihuahua bared his teeth at me, foam dripping from his black lips.
‘Well, son,’ the fat lady sighed. ‘If you insist.’
Ice started forming in my stomach. ‘Um, did you just call that Chihuahua your
son?’
‘Chimera, dear,’ the fat lady corrected. ‘Not a Chihuahua. It’s an easy mistake
to make.’
She rolled up her denim sleeves, revealing that the skin of her arms was scaly
and green. When she smiled, I saw that her teeth were fangs. The pupils of her
eyes were sideways slits, like a reptile’s.
The Chihuahua barked louder, and with each bark, it grew. First to the size of
a Dobermann, then to a lion. The bark became a roar.
The little boy screamed. His parents pulled him back towards the exit, straight
into the park ranger, who stood, paralysed, gaping at the monster.
The Chimera was now so tall its back rubbed against the roof. It had the head
of a lion with a blood-caked mane, the body and hooves of a giant goat, and a
serpent for a tail, a three-metre-long diamondback growing right out of its
shaggy behind. The rhinestone dog collar still hung around its neck, and the
plate-sized dog tag was now easy to read: CHIMERA – RABID, FIREBREATHING, POISONOUS - IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL TARTARUS - EXT.
954.
I realized I hadn’t even uncapped my sword. My hands were numb. I was
three metres away from the Chimeras bloody maw, and I knew that as soon as I
moved, the creature would lunge.
The snake lady made a hissing noise that might’ve been laughter. ‘Be
honoured, Percy Jackson. Lord Zeus rarely allows me to test a hero with one of
my brood. For I am the Mother of Monsters, the terrible Echidna!’
I stared at her. All I could think to say was: ‘Isn’t that a kind of anteater?’
She howled, her reptilian face turning brown and green with rage. ‘I hate it
when people say that! I hate Australia! Naming that ridiculous animal after me.
For that, Percy Jackson, my son shall destroy you!’
The Chimera charged, its lion teeth gnashing. I managed to leap aside and
dodge the bite.
I ended up next to the family and the park ranger, who were all screaming
now, trying to pry open the emergency exit doors.
I couldn’t let them get hurt. I uncapped my sword, ran to the other side of the
deck, and yelled, ‘Hey, Chihuahua!’
The Chimera turned faster than I would’ve thought possible.
Before I could swing my sword, it opened its mouth, emitting a stench like the
world’s largest barbecue pit, and shot a column of flame straight at me.
I dived through the explosion. The carpet burst into flames; the heat was so
intense, it seared off my eyebrows.
Where I had been standing a moment before was a ragged hole in the side of
the Arch, with melted metal steaming around the edges.
Great, I thought. We just blowtorched a national monument.
Riptide was now a shining bronze blade in my hands, and as the Chimera
turned, I slashed at its neck.
That was my fatal mistake. The blade sparked harmlessly off the dog collar. I
tried to regain my balance, but I was so worried about defending myself against
the fiery lion’s mouth, I completely forgot about the serpent tail until it whipped
around and sank its fangs into my calf.
My whole leg was on fire. I tried to jab Riptide into the Chimera’s mouth, but
the serpent tail wrapped around my ankles and pulled me off balance, and my
blade flew out of my hand, spinning out of the hole in the Arch and down
towards the Mississippi River.
I managed to get to my feet, but I knew I had lost. I was weaponless. I could
feel deadly poison racing up to my chest. I remembered Chiron saying that
Anaklusmos would always return to me, but there was no pen in my pocket.
Maybe it had fallen too far away. Maybe it only returned when it was in pen
form. I didn’t know, and I wasn’t going to live long enough to figure it out.
I backed into the hole in the wall. The Chimera advanced, growling, smoke
curling from its lips. The snake lady, Echidna, cackled. ‘They don’t make heroes
like they used to, eh, son?’
The monster growled. It seemed in no hurry to finish me off now that I was
beaten.
I glanced at the park ranger and the family. The little boy was hiding behind
his father’s legs. I had to protect these people. I couldn’t just… die. I tried to
think, but my whole body was on fire. My head felt dizzy. I had no sword. I was
facing a massive, fire-breathing monster and its mother. And I was scared.
There was no place else to go, so I stepped to the edge of the hole. Far, far
below, the river glittered.
If I died, would the monsters go away? Would they leave the humans alone?
‘If you are the son of Poseidon,’ Echidna hissed, ‘you would not fear water.
Jump, Percy Jackson. Show me that water will not harm you. Jump and retrieve
your sword. Prove your bloodline.’
Yeah, right, I thought. I’d read somewhere that jumping into water from a
couple of stories up was like jumping onto solid tar. From here, I’d splatter on
impact.
The Chimera’s mouth glowed red, heating up for another blast.
‘You have no faith,’ Echidna told me. ‘You do not trust the gods. I cannot
blame you, little coward. Better you die now. The gods are faithless. The poison
is in your heart.’
She was right: I was dying. I could feel my breath slowing down. Nobody
could save me, not even the gods.
I backed up and looked down at the water. I remembered the warm glow of
my father’s smile when I was a baby. He must have seen me. He must have
visited me when I was in my cradle.
I remembered the swirling green trident that had appeared above my head the
night of capture the flag, when Poseidon had claimed me as his son.
But this wasn’t the sea. This was the Mississippi, dead centre of the USA.
There was no sea god here.
‘Die, faithless one,’ Echidna rasped, and the Chimera sent a column of flame
towards my face.
‘Father, help me,’ I prayed.
I turned and jumped. My clothes on fire, poison coursing through my veins, I
plummeted towards the river.
14
I Become a Known Fugitive
I’d love to tell you I had some deep revelation on my way down, that I came to
terms with my own mortality, laughed in the face of death, et cetera.
The truth? My only thought was: Aaaaggghhhhh!
The river raced towards me at the speed of a truck. Wind ripped the breath
from my lungs. Steeples and skyscrapers and bridges tumbled in and out of my
vision.
And then: Flaaa-boooom!
A whiteout of bubbles. I sank through the murk, sure that I was about to end
up embedded in fifty metres of mud and lost forever.
But my impact with the water hadn’t hurt. I was falling slowly now, bubbles
trickling up through my fingers. I settled on the river bottom soundlessly. A
catfish the size of my stepfather lurched away into the gloom. Clouds of silt and
disgusting garbage – beer bottles, old shoes, plastic bags – swirled up all around
me.
At that point, I realized a few things: first, I had not been flattened into a
pancake. I had not been barbecued. I couldn’t even feel the Chimera poison
boiling in my veins any more. I was alive, which was good.
Second realization: I wasn’t wet. I mean, I could feel the coolness of the
water. I could see where the fire on my clothes had been quenched. But when I
touched my own shirt, it felt perfectly dry.
I looked at the garbage floating by and snatched an old cigarette lighter.
No way, I thought.
I flicked the lighter. It sparked. A tiny flame appeared, right there at the
bottom of the Mississippi.
I grabbed a soggy hamburger wrapper out of the current and immediately the
paper turned dry. I lit it with no problem. As soon as I let it go, the flames
sputtered out. The wrapper turned back into a slimy rag. Weird.
But the strangest thought occurred to me only last: I was breathing. I was
underwater, and I was breathing normally.
I stood up, thigh-deep in mud. My legs felt shaky. My hands trembled. I
should’ve been dead. The fact that I wasn’t seemed like… well, a miracle. I
imagined a woman’s voice, a voice that sounded a bit like my mother: Percy,
what do you say?
Um… thanks. Underwater, I sounded like I did on recordings, like a much
older kid. Thank you… Father.
No response. Just the dark drift of garbage downriver, the enormous catfish
gliding by, the flash of sunset on the water’s surface far above, turning
everything the colour of butterscotch.
Why had Poseidon saved me? The more I thought about it, the more ashamed
I felt. So I’d got lucky a few times before. Against a thing like the Chimera, I
had never stood a chance. Those poor people in the Arch were probably toast. I
couldn’t protect them. I was no hero. Maybe I should just stay down here with
the catfish, join the bottom feeders.
Fump-fump-fump. A riverboat’s paddlewheel churned above me, swirling the
silt around.
There, not two metres in front of me, was my sword, its gleaming bronze hilt
sticking up in the mud.
I heard that woman’s voice again: Percy, take the sword. Your father believes
in you. This time, I knew the voice wasn’t in my head. I wasn’t imagining it. Her
words seemed to come from everywhere, rippling through the water like dolphin
sonar.
‘Where are you?’ I called aloud.
Then, through the gloom, I saw her – a woman the colour of the water, a ghost
in the current, floating just above the sword. She had long billowing hair, and her
eyes, barely visible, were green like mine.
A lump formed in my throat. I said, ‘Mom?’
No, child, only a messenger, though your mother’s fate is not as hopeless as
you believe. Go to the beach in Santa Monica.
‘What?’
It is your father’s will. Before you descend into the Underworld, you must go
to Santa Monica. Please, Percy, I cannot stay long. The river here is too foul for
my presence.
‘But…’ I was sure this woman was my mother, or a vision of her, anyway.
‘Who – how did you –’
There was so much I wanted to ask, the words jammed up in my throat.
I cannot stay, brave one, the woman said. She reached out, and I felt the
current brush my face like a caress. You must go to Santa Monica! And, Percy,
do not trust the gifts…
Her voice faded.
‘Gifts?’ I asked. ‘What gifts? Wait!’
She made one more attempt to speak, but the sound was gone. Her image
melted away. If it was my mother, I had lost her again.
I felt like drowning myself. The only problem: I was immune to drowning.
Your father believes in you, she had said.
She’d also called me brave… unless she was talking to the catfish.
I waded towards Riptide and grabbed it by the hilt. The Chimera might still be
up there with its snaky fat mother, waiting to finish me off. At the very least, the
mortal police would be arriving, trying to figure out who had blown a hole in the
Arch. If they found me, they’d have some questions.
I capped my sword, stuck the ballpoint pen in my pocket. ‘Thank you, Father,’
I said again to the dark water.
Then I kicked up through the muck and swam for the surface.
I came ashore next to a floating McDonald’s.
A block away, every emergency vehicle in St Louis was surrounding the Arch.
Police helicopters circled overhead. The crowd of onlookers reminded me of
Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
A little girl said, ‘Mama! That boy walked out of the river.’
‘That’s nice, dear,’ her mother said, craning her neck to watch the ambulances.
‘But he’s dry!’
‘That’s nice, dear.’
A news lady was talking for the camera: ‘Probably not a terrorist attack, we’re
told, but it’s still very early in the investigation. The damage, as you can see, is
very serious. We’re trying to get to some of the survivors, to question them about
eyewitness reports of someone falling from the Arch.’
Survivors. I felt a surge of relief. Maybe the park ranger and that family made
it out safely. I hoped Annabeth and Grover were okay.
I tried to push through the crowd to see what was going on inside the police
line.
‘… an adolescent boy,’ another reporter was saying. ‘Channel Five has learned
that surveillance cameras show an adolescent boy going wild on the observation
deck, somehow setting off this freak explosion. Hard to believe, John, but that’s
what we’re hearing. Again, no confirmed fatalities…’
I backed away, trying to keep my head down. I had to go a long way around
the police perimeter. Uniformed officers and news reporters were everywhere.
I’d almost lost hope of ever finding Annabeth and Grover when a familiar
voice bleated, ‘Perrr-cy!’
I turned and got tackled by Grover’s bear hug – or goat hug. He said, ‘We
thought you’d gone to Hades the hard way!’
Annabeth stood behind him, trying to look angry, but even she seemed
relieved to see me. ‘We can’t leave you alone for five minutes! What happened?’
‘I sort of fell.’
‘Percy! Two hundred metres?’
Behind us, a cop shouted, ‘Gangway!’ The crowd parted, and a couple of
paramedics hustled out, rolling a woman on a stretcher. I recognized her
immediately as the mother of the little boy who’d been on the observation deck.
She was saying, ‘And then this huge dog, this huge fire-breathing Chihuahua –’
‘Okay, ma’am,’ the paramedic said. ‘Just calm down. Your family is fine. The
medication is starting to kick in.’
‘I’m not crazy! This boy jumped out of the hole and the monster disappeared.’
Then she saw me. ‘There he is! That’s the boy!’
I turned quickly and pulled Annabeth and Grover after me. We disappeared
into the crowd.
‘What’s going on?’ Annabeth demanded. ‘Was she talking about the
Chihuahua on the elevator?’
I told them the whole story of the Chimera, Echidna, my high-dive act, the
underwater lady’s message.
‘Whoa,’ said Grover. ‘We’ve got to get you to Santa Monica! You can’t ignore
a summons from your dad.’
Before Annabeth could respond, we passed another reporter doing a news
break, and I almost froze in my tracks when he said, ‘Percy Jackson. That’s
right, Dan. Channel Twelve has learned that the boy who may have caused this
explosion fits the description of a young man wanted by the authorities for a
serious New Jersey bus accident three days ago. And the boy is believed to be
travelling west. For our viewers at home, here is a photo of Percy Jackson.’
We ducked around the news van and slipped into an alley.
‘First things first,’ I told Grover. ‘We’ve got to get out of town!’
Somehow, we made it back to the Amtrak station without getting spotted. We
got on board the train just before it pulled out for Denver. The train trundled
west as darkness fell, police lights still pulsing against the St Louis skyline
behind us.
15
A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers
The next afternoon, June 14, seven days before the solstice, our train rolled into
Denver. We hadn’t eaten since the night before in the dining car, somewhere in
Kansas. We hadn’t taken a shower since Half-Blood Hill, and I was sure that was
obvious.
‘Let’s try to contact Chiron,’ Annabeth said. ‘I want to tell him about your talk
with the river spirit.’
‘We cant use phones, right?’
‘I’m not talking about phones.’
We wandered through downtown for about half an hour, though I wasn’t sure
what Annabeth was looking for. The air was dry and hot, which felt weird after
the humidity of St Louis. Everywhere we turned, the Rocky Mountains seemed
to be staring at me, like a tidal wave about to crash into the city.
Finally we found an empty do-it-yourself car wash. We veered towards the
stall furthest from the street, keeping our eyes open for patrol cars. We were
three adolescents hanging out at a car wash without a car; any cop worth his
doughnuts would figure we were up to no good.
‘What exactly are we doing?’ I asked, as Grover took out the spray gun.
‘It’s seventy-five cents,’ he grumbled. ‘I’ve only got two quarters left.
Annabeth?’
‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘The dining car wiped me out.’
I fished out my last bit of change and passed Grover a quarter, which left me
two nickels and one drachma from Medusa’s place.
‘Excellent,’ Grover said. ‘We could do it with a spray bottle, of course, but the
connection isn’t as good, and my arm gets tired of pumping.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He fed in the quarters and set the knob to fine mist ‘I-M’ing.’
‘Instant messaging?’
‘Iris-messaging,’ Annabeth corrected. ‘The rainbow goddess Iris carries
messages for the gods. If you know how to ask, and she’s not too busy, she’ll do
the same for half-bloods.’
‘You summon the goddess with a spray gun?’
Grover pointed the nozzle in the air and water hissed out in a thick white mist.
‘Unless you know an easier way to make a rainbow.’
Sure enough, late afternoon light filtered through the vapour and broke into
colours.
Annabeth held her palm out to me. ‘Drachma, please.’
I handed it over.
She raised the coin over her head. ‘O goddess, accept our offering.’
She threw the drachma into the rainbow. It disappeared in a golden shimmer.
‘Half-Blood Hill,’ Annabeth requested.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then I was looking through the mist at strawberry fields, and the Long Island
Sound in the distance. We seemed to be on the porch of the Big House. Standing
with his back to us at the railing was a sandy-haired guy in shorts and an orange
tank top. He was holding a bronze sword and seemed to be staring intently at
something down in the meadow.
‘Luke!’ I called.
He turned, eyes wide. I could swear he was standing a metre in front of me
through a screen of mist, except I could only see the part of him that appeared in
the rainbow.
‘Percy!’ His scarred face broke into a grin. ‘Is that Annabeth, too? Thank the
gods! Are you guys okay?’
‘We’re… uh… fine,’ Annabeth stammered. She was madly straightening her
dirty T-shirt, trying to comb the loose hair out of her face. ‘We thought – Chiron
– I mean –’
‘He’s down at the cabins.’ Luke’s smile faded. ‘We’re having some issues with
the campers. Listen, is everything cool with you? Is Grover all right?’
‘I’m right here,’ Grover called. He held the nozzle out to one side and stepped
into Luke’s line of vision. ‘What kind of issues?’
Just then a big Lincoln Continental pulled into the car wash with its stereo
turned to maximum hip-hop. As the car slid into the next stall, the bass from the
subwoofers vibrated so much, it shook the pavement.
‘Chiron had to – what’s that noise?’ Luke yelled.
‘I’ll take care of it!’ Annabeth yelled back, looking very relieved to have an
excuse to get out of sight. ‘Grover, come on!’
‘What?’ Grover said. ‘But –’
‘Give Percy the nozzle and come on!’ she ordered.
Grover muttered something about girls being harder to understand than the
Oracle at Delphi, then he handed me the spray gun and followed Annabeth.
I readjusted the hose so I could keep the rainbow going and still see Luke.
‘Chiron had to break up a fight,’ Luke shouted to me over the music. ‘Things
are pretty tense here, Percy. Word leaked out about the Zeus–Poseidon stand-off.
We’re still not sure how – probably the same scumbag who summoned the
hellhound. Now the campers are starting to take sides. It’s shaping up like the
Trojan War all over again. Aphrodite, Ares and Apollo are backing Poseidon,
more or less. Athena is backing Zeus.’
I shuddered to think that Clarisse’s cabin would ever be on my dad’s side for
anything. In the next stall, I heard Annabeth and some guy arguing with each
other, then the music’s volume decreased drastically.
‘So what’s your status?’ Luke asked me. ‘Chiron will be sorry he missed you.’
I told him pretty much everything, including my dreams. It felt so good to see
him, to feel like I was back at camp even for a few minutes, that I didn’t realize
how long I had talked until the beeper went off on the spray machine, and I
realized I only had one more minute before the water shut off.
‘I wish I could be there,’ Luke told me. ‘We can’t help from here, I’m afraid,
but listen… it had to be Hades who took the master bolt. He was there at
Olympus at the winter solstice. I was chaperoning a field trip and we saw him.’
‘But Chiron said the gods can’t take each other’s magic items directly.’
‘That’s true,’ Luke said, looking troubled. ‘Still… Hades has the helmet of
darkness. How could anybody else sneak into the throne room and steal the
master bolt? You’d have to be invisible.’
We were both silent, until Luke seemed to realize what he’d said.
‘Oh, hey,’ he protested. ‘I didn’t mean Annabeth. She and I have known each
other forever. She would never… I mean, she’s like a little sister to me.’
I wondered if Annabeth would like that description. In the stall next to us, the
music stopped completely. A man screamed in terror, car doors slammed and the
Lincoln peeled out of the car wash.
‘You’d better go see what that was,’ Luke said. ‘Listen, are you wearing the
flying shoes? I’ll feel better if I know they’ve done you some good.’
‘Oh… uh, yeah!’ I tried not to sound like a guilty liar. ‘Yeah, they’ve come in
handy.’
‘Really?’ He grinned. ‘They fit and everything?’
The water shut off. The mist started to evaporate.
‘Well, take care of yourself out there in Denver,’ Luke called, his voice getting
fainter. ‘And tell Grover it’ll be better this time! Nobody will get turned into a
pine tree if he just –’
But the mist was gone, and Luke’s image faded to nothing. I was alone in a
wet, empty car-wash stall.
Annabeth and Grover came around the corner, laughing, but stopped when
they saw my face. Annabeth’s smile faded. ‘What happened, Percy? What did
Luke say?’
‘Not much,’ I lied, my stomach feeling as empty as a Big Three cabin. ‘Come
on, let’s find some dinner.’
A few minutes later, we were sitting at a booth in a gleaming chrome diner. All
around us, families were eating burgers and drinking milkshakes and sodas.
Finally the waitress came over. She raised her eyebrow sceptically. ‘Well?’
I said, ‘We, um, want to order dinner.’
‘You kids have money to pay for it?’
Grover’s lower lip quivered. I was afraid he would start bleating, or worse,
start eating the linoleum. Annabeth looked ready to pass out from hunger.
I was trying to think up a sob story for the waitress when a rumble shook the
whole building; a motorcycle the size of a baby elephant had pulled up to the
kerb.
All conversation in the diner stopped. The motorcycle’s headlight glared red.
Its gas tank had flames painted on it, and a shotgun holster riveted to either side,
complete with shotguns. The seat was leather – but leather that looked like…
well, Caucasian human skin.
The guy on the bike would’ve made pro wrestlers run for Mama. He was
dressed in a red muscle shirt and black jeans and a black leather duster, with a
hunting knife strapped to his thigh. He wore red wraparound shades, and he had
the cruellest, most brutal face I’d ever seen – handsome, I guess, but wicked –
with an oily black crew cut and cheeks that were scarred from many, many
fights. The weird thing was, I felt like I’d seen his face somewhere before.
As he walked into the diner, a hot, dry wind blew through the place. All the
people rose, as if they were hypnotized, but the biker waved his hand
dismissively and they all sat down again. Everybody went back to their
conversations. The waitress blinked, as if somebody had just pressed the rewind
button on her brain. She asked us again, ‘You kids have money to pay for it?’
The biker said, ‘It’s on me.’ He slid into our booth, which was way too small
for him, and crowded Annabeth against the window.
He looked up at the waitress, who was gaping at him, and said, ‘Are you still
here?’
He pointed at her, and she stiffened. She turned as if she’d been spun around,
then marched back towards the kitchen.
The biker looked at me. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the red shades, but bad
feelings started boiling in my stomach. Anger, resentment, bitterness. I wanted to
hit a wall. I wanted to pick a fight with somebody. Who did this guy think he
was?
He gave me a wicked grin. ‘So you’re old Seaweed’s kid, huh?’
I should’ve been surprised, or scared, but instead I felt like I was looking at
my stepdad, Gabe. I wanted to rip this guy’s head off. ‘What’s it to you?’
Annabeth’s eyes flashed me a warning. ‘Percy, this is –’
The biker raised his hand.
‘S’okay,’ he said. ‘I don’t mind a little attitude. Long as you remember who’s
the boss. You know who I am, little cousin?’
Then it struck me why this guy looked familiar. He had the same vicious sneer
as some of the kids at Camp Half-Blood, the ones from cabin five.
‘You’re Clarisse’s dad,’ I said. ‘Ares, god of war.’
Ares grinned and took off his shades. Where his eyes should’ve been, there
was only fire, empty sockets glowing with miniature nuclear explosions. ‘That’s
right, punk. I heard you broke Clarisse’s spear.’
‘She was asking for it.’
‘Probably. That’s cool. I don’t fight my kids’ fights, you know? What I’m here
for – I heard you were in town. I got a little proposition for you.’
The waitress came back with heaping trays of food – cheeseburgers, fries,
onion rings and chocolate shakes.
Ares handed her a few gold drachmas.
She looked nervously at the coins. ‘But, these aren’t…’
Ares pulled out his huge knife and started cleaning his fingernails. ‘Problem,
sweetheart?’
The waitress swallowed, then left with the gold.
‘You can’t do that,’ I told Ares. ‘You can’t just threaten people with a knife.’
Ares laughed. Are you kidding? I love this country. Best place since Sparta.
Don’t you carry a weapon, punk? You should. Dangerous world out there.
Which brings me to my proposition. I need you to do me a favour.’
‘What favour could I do for a god?’
‘Something a god doesn’t have time to do himself. It’s nothing much. I left my
shield at an abandoned water park here in town. I was going on a little… date
with my girlfriend. We were interrupted. I left my shield behind. I want you to
fetch it for me.’
‘Why don’t you go back and get it yourself?’
The fire in his eye sockets glowed a little hotter.
‘Why don’t I turn you into prairie dog and run you over with my Harley?
Because I don’t feel like it. A god is giving you an opportunity to prove yourself,
Percy Jackson. Will you prove yourself a coward?’ He leaned forward. ‘Or
maybe you only fight when there’s a river to dive into, so your daddy can protect
you.’
I wanted to punch this guy, but somehow, I knew he was waiting for that.
Ares’s power was causing my anger. He’d love it if I attacked. I didn’t want to
give him the satisfaction.
‘We’re not interested,’ I said. ‘We’ve already got a quest.’
Ares’s fiery eyes made me see things I didn’t want to see – blood and smoke
and corpses on the battlefield. ‘I know all about your quest, punk. When that
item was first stolen, Zeus sent his best out looking for it: Apollo, Athena,
Artemis and me, naturally. If I couldn’t sniff out a weapon that powerful…’ He
licked his lips, as if the very thought of the master bolt made him hungry.
‘Well… if I couldn’t find it, you got no hope. Nevertheless, I’m trying to give
you the benefit of a doubt. Your dad and I go way back. After all, I’m the one
who told him my suspicions about old Corpse Breath.’
‘You told him Hades stole the bolt?’
‘Sure. Framing somebody to start a war. Oldest trick in the book. I recognized
it immediately. In a way, you got me to thank for your little quest.’
‘Thanks,’ I grumbled.
‘Hey, I’m a generous guy. Just do my little job, and I’ll help you on your way.
I’ll arrange a ride west for you and your friends.’
‘We’re doing fine on our own.’
‘Yeah, right. No money. No wheels. No clue what you’re up against. Help me
out, and maybe I’ll tell you something you need to know. Something about your
mom.’
‘My mom?’
He grinned. ‘That got your attention. The water park is a mile west on
Delancy. You can’t miss it. Look for the Tunnel of Love ride.’
‘What interrupted your date?’ I asked. ‘Something scare you off?’
Ares bared his teeth, but I’d seen his threatening look before on Clarisse.
There was something false about it, almost like he was nervous.
‘You’re lucky you met me, punk, and not one of the other Olympians. They’re
not as forgiving of rudeness as I am. I’ll meet you back here when you’re done.
Don’t disappoint me.’
After that I must have fainted, or fallen into a trance, because when I opened
my eyes again Ares was gone. I might’ve thought the conversation had been a
dream, but Annabeth and Grover’s expressions told me otherwise.
‘Not good,’ Grover said. ‘Ares sought you out, Percy. This is not good.’
I stared out the window. The motorcycle had disappeared.
Did Ares really know something about my mom, or was he just playing with
me? Now that he was gone, all the anger had drained out of me. I realized Ares
must love to mess with people’s emotions. That was his power – cranking up the
passions so badly, they clouded your ability to think.
‘It’s probably some kind of trick,’ I said. ‘Forget Ares. Let’s just go.’
‘We can’t,’ Annabeth said. ‘Look, I hate Ares as much as anybody, but you
don’t ignore the gods unless you want serious bad fortune. He wasn’t kidding
about turning you into a rodent.’
I looked down at my cheeseburger, which suddenly didn’t seem so appetizing.
‘Why does he need us?’
‘Maybe it’s a problem that requires brains,’ Annabeth said. ‘Ares has strength.
That’s all he has. Even strength has to bow to wisdom sometimes.’
‘But this water park… he acted almost scared. What would make a war god
run away like that?’
Annabeth and Grover glanced nervously at each other.
Annabeth said, ‘I’m afraid well have to find out.’
The sun was sinking behind the mountains by the time we found the water park.
Judging from the sign, it once had been called WATERLAND, but now some of
the letters were smashed out, so it read WAT R A D.
The main gate was padlocked and topped with barbed wire. Inside, huge dry
waterslides and tubes and pipes curled everywhere, leading to empty pools. Old
tickets and advertisements fluttered around the tarmac. With night coming on,
the place looked sad and creepy.
‘If Ares brings his girlfriend here for a date,’ I said, staring up at the barbed
wire, ‘I’d hate to see what she looks like.’
‘Percy,’ Annabeth warned. ‘Be more respectful.’
‘Why? I thought you hated Ares.’
‘He’s still a god. And his girlfriend is very temperamental’
‘You don’t want to insult her looks,’ Grover added.
‘Who is she? Echidna?’
‘No, Aphrodite,’ Grover said, a little dreamily. ‘Goddess of love.’
‘I thought she was married to somebody,’ I said. ‘Hephaestus.’
‘What’s your point?’ he asked.
‘Oh.’ I suddenly felt the need to change the subject. ‘So how do we get in?’
‘Maia!’ Grover’s shoes sprouted wings.
He flew over the fence, did an unintended somersault in midair, then stumbled
to a landing on the opposite side. He dusted off his jeans, as if he’d planned the
whole thing. ‘You guys coming?’
Annabeth and I had to climb the old-fashioned way, holding down the barbed
wire for each other as we crawled over the top.
The shadows grew long as we walked through the park, checking out the
attractions. There was Ankle Biter Island, Head Over Wedgie and Dude,
Where’s My Swimsuit?
No monsters came to get us. Nothing made the slightest noise.
We found a souvenir shop that had been left open. Merchandise still lined the
shelves: snow globes, pencils, postcards and racks of –
‘Clothes,’ Annabeth said. ‘Fresh clothes.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But you can’t just –’
‘Watch me.’
She snatched an entire row of stuff of the racks and disappeared into the
changing room. A few minutes later she came out in Waterland flower-print
shorts, a big red Waterland T-shirt and commemorative Waterland surf shoes. A
Waterland backpack was slung over her shoulder, obviously stuffed with more
goodies.
‘What the heck.’ Grover shrugged. Soon, all three of us were decked out like
walking advertisements for the defunct theme park.
We continued searching for the Tunnel of Love. I got the feeling that the
whole park was holding its breath. ‘So Ares and Aphrodite,’ I said, to keep my
mind off the growing dark, ‘they have a thing going?’
‘That’s old gossip, Percy,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Three-thousand-year-old
gossip.’
‘What about Aphrodite’s husband?’
‘Well, you know,’ she said. ‘Hephaestus. The blacksmith. He was crippled
when he was a baby, thrown off Mount Olympus by Zeus. So he isn’t exactly
handsome. Clever with his hands and all, but Aphrodite isn’t into brains and
talent, you know?’
‘She likes bikers.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Hephaestus knows?’
‘Oh sure,’ Annabeth said. ‘He caught them together once. I mean, literally
caught them, in a golden net, and invited all the gods to come and laugh at them.
Hephaestus is always trying to embarrass them. That’s why they meet in out-ofthe-way places, like…’
She stopped, looking straight ahead. ‘Like that.’
In front of us was an empty pool that would’ve been awesome for
skateboarding. It was at least fifty metres across and shaped like a bowl.
Around the rim, a dozen bronze statues of Cupid stood guard with wings
spread and bows ready to fire. On the opposite side from us, a tunnel opened up,
probably where the water flowed into when the pool was full. The sign above it
read: THRILL RIDE O’ LOVE: THIS IS NOT YOUR PARENTS’ TUNNEL OF
LOVE!
Grover crept towards the edge. ‘Guys, look.’
Marooned at the bottom of the pool was a pink-and-white two-seater boat with
a canopy over the top and little hearts painted all over it. In the left seat, glinting
in the fading light, was Ares’s shield, a polished circle of bronze.
‘This is too easy,’ I said. ‘So we just walk down there and get it?’
Annabeth ran her fingers along the base of the nearest Cupid statue.
‘There’s a Greek letter carved here,’ she said. ‘Eta. I wonder…’
‘Grover,’ I said, ‘you smell any monsters?’
He sniffed the wind. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing – like, in-the-Arch-and-you-didn’t-smell-Echidna nothing, or really
nothing?’
Grover looked hurt. ‘I told you, that was underground.’
‘Okay, I’m sorry.’ I took a deep breath. ‘I’m going down there.’
‘I’ll go with you.’ Grover didn’t sound too enthusiastic, but I got the feeling
he was trying to make up for what had happened in St Louis.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘I want you to stay up top with the flying shoes. You’re the
Red Baron, remember? I’ll be counting on you for backup, in case something
goes wrong.’
Grover puffed up his chest a little. ‘Sure. But what could go wrong?’
‘I don’t know. Just a feeling. Annabeth, come with me –’
‘Are you kidding?’ She looked at me as if I’d just dropped from the moon.
Her cheeks were bright red.
‘What’s the problem now?’ I demanded.
‘Me, go with you to the… the “Thrill Ride of Love”? How embarrassing is
that? What if somebody saw me?’
‘Who’s going to see you?’ But my face was burning now, too. Leave it to a
girl to make everything complicated. ‘Fine,’ I told her. ‘I’ll do it myself.’ But
when I started down the side of the pool, she followed me, muttering about how
boys always messed things up.
We reached the boat. The shield was propped on one seat, and next to it was a
lady’s silk scarf. I tried to imagine Ares and Aphrodite here, a couple of gods
meeting in a junked-out amusement-park ride. Why? Then I noticed something I
hadn’t seen from up top: mirrors all the way around the rim of the pool, facing
this spot. We could see ourselves no matter which direction we looked. That
must be it. While Ares and Aphrodite were smooching with each other they
could look at their favourite people: themselves.
I picked up the scarf. It shimmered pink, and the perfume was indescribable –
rose, or mountain laurel. Something good. I smiled, a little dreamy, and was
about to rub the scarf against my cheek when Annabeth ripped it out of my hand
and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘Oh, no you don’t. Stay away from that love magic.’
‘What?’
‘Just get the shield, Seaweed Brain, and let’s get out of here.’
The moment I touched the shield, I knew we were in trouble. My hand broke
through something that had been connecting it to the dashboard. A cobweb, I
thought, but then I looked at a strand of it on my palm and saw it was some kind
of metal filament, so fine it was almost invisible. A tripwire.
‘Wait,’ Annabeth said.
‘Too late.’
‘There’s another Greek letter on the side of the boat, another Eta. This is a
trap.’
Noise erupted all around us, of a million gears grinding, as if the whole pool
were turning into one giant machine.
Grover yelled, ‘Guys!’
Up on the rim, the Cupid statues were drawing their bows into firing position.
Before I could suggest taking cover, they shot, but not at us. They fired at each
other, across the rim of the pool. Silky cables trailed from the arrows, arcing
over the pool and anchoring where they landed to form a huge golden asterisk.
Then smaller metallic threads started weaving together magically between the
main strands, making a net.
‘We have to get out,’ I said.
‘Duh!’ Annabeth said.
I grabbed the shield and we ran, but going up the slope of the pool was not as
easy as going down.
‘Come on!’ Grover shouted.
He was trying to hold open a section of the net for us, but wherever he
touched it, the golden threads started to wrap around his hands.
The Cupids’ heads popped open. Out came video cameras. Spotlights rose up
all around the pool, blinding us with illumination, and a loudspeaker voice
boomed: ‘Live to Olympus in one minute… Fifty-nine seconds, fifty-eight…’
‘Hephaestus!’ Annabeth screamed. ‘I’m so stupid! Eta is “H”. He made this
trap to catch his wife with Ares. Now we’re going to be broadcast live to
Olympus and look like absolute fools!’
We’d almost made it to the rim when the row of mirrors opened like hatches
and thousands of tiny metallic… things poured out.
Annabeth screamed.
It was an army of wind-up creepy-crawlies: bronze-gear bodies, spindly legs,
little pincer mouths, all scuttling towards us in a wave of clacking, whirring
metal.
‘Spiders!’ Annabeth said. ‘Sp – sp – aaaah!’
I’d never seen her like this before. She fell backwards in terror and almost got
overwhelmed by the spider robots before I pulled her up and dragged her back
towards the boat.
The things were coming out from all around the rim now, millions of them,
flooding towards the centre of the pool, completely surrounding us. I told myself
they probably weren’t programmed to kill, just corral us and bite us and make us
look stupid. Then again, this was a trap meant for gods. And we weren’t gods.
Annabeth and I climbed into the boat. I started kicking away the spiders as
they swarmed aboard. I yelled at Annabeth to help me, but she was too paralysed
to do much more than scream.
‘Thirty, twenty-nine,’ called the loudspeaker.
The spiders started spitting out strands of metal thread, trying to tie us down.
The strands were easy enough to break at first, but there were so many of them,
and the spiders just kept coming. I kicked one away from Annabeth’s leg and its
pincers took a chunk out of my new surf shoe.
Grover hovered above the pool in his flying trainers, trying to pull the net
loose, but it wouldn’t budge.
Think, I told myself. Think.
The tunnel of love entrance was under the net. We could use it as an exit,
except that it was blocked by a million robot spiders.
‘Fifteen, fourteen,’ the loudspeaker called.
Water, I thought. Where does the ride’s water come from?
Then I saw them: huge water pipes behind the mirrors, where the spiders had
come from. And up above the net, next to one of the Cupids, a glass-windowed
booth that must be the controller’s station.
‘Grover!’ I yelled. ‘Get into that booth! Find the “on” switch!’
‘But –’
‘Do it!’ It was a crazy hope, but it was our only chance. The spiders were all
over the prow of the boat now. Annabeth was screaming her head off. I had to
get us out of here.
Grover was in the controller’s booth now, slamming away at the buttons.
‘Five, four –’
Grover looked up at me hopelessly, raising his hands. He was letting me know
that he’d pushed every button, but still nothing was happening.
I closed my eyes and thought about waves, rushing water, the Mississippi
River. I felt a familiar tug in my gut. I tried to imagine that I was dragging the
ocean all the way to Denver.
‘Two, one, zero!’
Water exploded out of the pipes. It roared into the pool, sweeping away the
spiders. I pulled Annabeth into the seat next to me and fastened her seatbelt just
as the tidal wave slammed into our boat, over the top, whisking the spiders away
and dousing us completely, but not capsizing us. The boat turned, lifted in the
flood, and spun in circles around the whirlpool.
The water was full of short-circuiting spiders, some of them smashing against
the pool’s concrete wall with such force they burst.
Spotlights glared down at us. The Cupid-cams were rolling, live to Olympus.
But I could only concentrate on controlling the boat. I willed it to ride the
current, to keep away from the wall. Maybe it was my imagination, but the boat
seemed to respond. At least, it didn’t break into a million pieces. We spun
around one last time, the water level now almost high enough to shred us against
the metal net. Then the boat’s nose turned towards the tunnel and we rocketed
through into the darkness.
Annabeth and I held tight, both of us screaming as the boat shot curls and
hugged corners and took forty-five degree plunges past pictures of Romeo and
Juliet and a bunch of other Valentine’s Day stuff.
Then we were out of the tunnel, the night air whistling through our hair as the
boat barrelled straight towards the exit.
If the ride had been in working order, we would’ve sailed off a ramp between
the golden Gates of Love and splashed down safely in the exit pool. But there
was a problem. The Gates of Love were chained. Two boats that had been
washed out of the tunnel before us were now piled against the barricade – one
submerged, the other cracked in half.
‘Unfasten your seat belt,’ I yelled to Annabeth.
‘Are you crazy?’
‘Unless you want to get smashed to death.’ I strapped Ares’s shield to my arm.
‘We’re going to have to jump for it.’ My idea was simple and insane. As the boat
struck, we would use its force like a springboard to jump the gate. I’d heard of
people surviving car crashes that way, getting thrown ten or fifteen metres away
from an accident. With luck, we would land in the pool.
Annabeth seemed to understand. She gripped my hand as the gates got closer.
‘When I say go,’ I said.
‘No! When I say go!’
‘What?’
‘Simple physics!’ she yelled. ‘Force times the trajectory angle –’
‘Fine!’ I shouted. ‘When you say go!’
She hesitated… hesitated… then yelled, ‘Now!’
Crack!
Annabeth was right. If we’d jumped when I thought we should’ve, we
would’ve crashed into the gates. She got us maximum lift.
Unfortunately, that was a little more than we needed. Our boat smashed into
the pileup and we were thrown into the air, straight over the gates, over the pool,
and down towards solid tarmac.
Something grabbed me from behind.
Annabeth yelled, ‘Ouch!’
Grover!
In midair, he had grabbed me by the shirt, and Annabeth by the arm, and was
trying to pull us out of a crash landing, but Annabeth and I had all the
momentum.
‘You’re too heavy!’ Grover said. ‘We’re going down!’
We spiralled towards the ground, Grover doing his best to slow the fall.
We smashed into a photo-board, Grover’s head going straight into the hole
where tourists would put their faces, pretending to be Noo-Noo the Friendly
Whale. Annabeth and I tumbled to the ground, banged up but alive. Ares’s shield
was still on my arm.
Once we caught our breath, Annabeth and I got Grover out of the photo-board
and thanked him for saving our lives. I looked back at the Thrill Ride of Love.
The water was subsiding. Our boat had been smashed to pieces against the gates.
A hundred metres away, at the entrance pool, the Cupids were still filming.
The statues had swivelled so that their cameras were trained straight on us, the
spotlights in our faces.
‘Show’s over!’ I yelled. ‘Thank you! Goodnight!’
The Cupids turned back to their original positions. The lights shut off. The
park went quiet and dark again, except for the gentle trickle of water into the
Thrill Ride of Love’s exit pool. I wondered if Olympus had gone to a
commercial break, or if our ratings had been any good.
I hated being teased. I hated being tricked. And I had plenty of experience
handling bullies who liked to do that stuff to me. I hefted the shield on my arm
and turned to my friends. ‘We need to have a little talk with Ares.’
16
We Take a Zebra to Vegas
The war god was waiting for us in the diner parking lot.
‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘You didn’t get yourself killed.’
‘You knew it was a trap,’ I said.
Ares gave me a wicked grin. ‘Bet that crippled blacksmith was surprised when
he netted a couple of stupid kids. You looked good on TV.’
I shoved his shield at him. ‘You’re a jerk.’
Annabeth and Grover caught their breath.
Ares grabbed the shield and spun it in the air like pizza dough. It changed
form, melting into a bulletproof vest. He slung it across his back.
‘See that truck over there?’ He pointed to an eighteen-wheeler parked across
the street from the diner. ‘That’s your ride. Take you straight to L.A., with one
stop in Vegas.’
The eighteen-wheeler had a sign on the back, which I could read only because
it was reverse-printed white on black, a good combination for dyslexia:
KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL: HUMANE ZOO TRANSPORT. WARNING:
LIVE WILD ANIMALS.
I said, ‘You’re kidding.’
Ares snapped his fingers. The back door of the truck unlatched. ‘Free ride
west, punk. Stop complaining. And here’s a little something for doing the job.’
He slung a blue nylon backpack off his handlebars and tossed it to me.
Inside were fresh clothes for all of us, twenty bucks in cash, a pouch full of
golden drachmas and a bag of Double Stuf Oreos.
I said, ‘I don’t want your lousy –’
‘Thank you, Lord Ares,’ Grover interrupted, giving me his best red-alert
warning look. ‘Thanks a lot.’
I gritted my teeth. It was probably a deadly insult to refuse something from a
god, but I didn’t want anything that Ares had touched. Reluctantly, I slung the
backpack over my shoulder. I knew my anger was being caused by the war god’s
presence, but I was still itching to punch him in the nose. He reminded me of
every bully I’d ever faced: Nancy Bobofit, Clarisse, Smelly Gabe, sarcastic
teachers – every jerk who’d called me stupid in school or laughed at me when
I’d got expelled.
I looked back at the diner, which had only a couple of customers now. The
waitress who’d served us dinner was watching nervously out the window, like
she was afraid Ares might hurt us. She dragged the cook out from the kitchen to
see. She said something to him. He nodded, held up a little disposable camera
and snapped a picture of us.
Great, I thought. We’ll make the papers again tomorrow.
I imagined the headline: TWELVE-YEAR-OLD OUTLAW BEATS UP
DEFENCELESS BIKER.
‘You owe me one more thing,’ I told Ares, trying to keep my voice level. ‘You
promised me information about my mother.’
‘You sure you can handle the news?’ He kick-started his motorcycle. ‘She’s
not dead.’
The ground seemed to spin beneath me. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she was taken away from the Minotaur before she could die. She was
turned into a shower of gold, right? That’s metamorphosis. Not death. She’s
being kept.’
‘Kept. Why?’
‘You need to study war, punk. Hostages. You take somebody to control
somebody else.’
‘Nobody’s controlling me.’
He laughed. ‘Oh yeah? See you around, kid.’
I balled up my fists. ‘You’re pretty smug, Lord Ares, for a guy who runs from
Cupid statues.’
Behind his sunglasses, fire glowed. I felt a hot wind in my hair. ‘We’ll meet
again, Percy Jackson. Next time you’re in a fight, watch your back.’
He revved his Harley, then roared off down Delancy Street.
Annabeth said, ‘That was not smart, Percy.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You don’t want a god as your enemy. Especially not that god.’
‘Hey, guys,’ Grover said. ‘I hate to interrupt, but…’
He pointed towards the diner. At the cash register, the last two customers were
paying their bill, two men in identical black coveralls, with a white logo on their
backs that matched the one on the KINDNESS INTERNATIONAL truck.
‘If we’re taking the zoo express,’ Grover said, ‘we need to hurry.’
I didn’t like it, but we had no better option. Besides, I’d seen enough of
Denver.
We ran across the street and climbed in the back of the big lorry, closing the
doors behind us.
The first thing that hit me was the smell. It was like the world’s biggest pan of
kitty litter.
The trailer was dark inside until I uncapped Anaklusmos. The blade cast a
faint bronze light over a very sad scene. Sitting in a row of filthy metal cages
were three of the most pathetic zoo animals I’d ever beheld: a zebra, a male
albino lion and some weird antelope thing I didn’t know the name for.
Someone had thrown the lion a sack of turnips, which he obviously didn’t
want to eat. The zebra and the antelope had each got a polystyrene tray of
hamburger meat. The zebra’s mane was matted with chewing gum, like
somebody had been spitting on it in their spare time. The antelope had a stupid
silver birthday balloon tied to one of his horns that read OVER THE HILL!
Apparently, nobody had wanted to get close enough to the lion to mess with
him, but the poor thing was pacing around on soiled blankets, in a space way too
small for him, panting from the stuffy heat of the trailer. He had flies buzzing
around his pink eyes and his ribs showed through his white fur.
‘This is kindness?’ Grover yelled. ‘Humane zoo transport?’
He probably would’ve gone right back outside to beat up the truckers with his
reed pipes, and I would’ve helped him, but just then the truck’s engine roared to
life, the trailer started shaking, and we were forced to sit down or fall down.
We huddled in the corner on some mildewed feed sacks, trying to ignore the
smell and the heat and the flies. Grover talked to the animals in a series of goat
bleats, but they just stared at him sadly. Annabeth was in favour of breaking the
cages and freeing them on the spot, but I pointed out it wouldn’t do much good
until the truck stopped moving. Besides, I had a feeling we might look a lot
better to the lion than those turnips.
I found a water jug and refilled their bowls, then used Anaklusmos to drag the
mismatched food out of their cages. I gave the meat to the lion and the turnips to
the zebra and the antelope.
Grover calmed the antelope down, while Annabeth used her knife to cut the
balloon off his horn. She wanted to cut the gum out of the zebra’s mane, too, but
we decided that would be too risky with the truck bumping around. We told
Grover to promise the animals we’d help them more in the morning, then we
settled in for the night.
Grover curled up on a turnip sack; Annabeth opened our bag of Double Stuf
Oreos and nibbled on one half-heartedly; I tried to cheer myself up by
concentrating on the fact that we were halfway to Los Angeles. Halfway to our
destination. It was only June fourteenth. The solstice wasn’t until the twenty-
first. We could make it in plenty of time.
On the other hand, I had no idea what to expect next. The gods kept toying
with me. At least Hephaestus had the decency to be honest about it – he’d put up
cameras and advertised me as entertainment. But even when the cameras weren’t
rolling, I had a feeling my quest was being watched. I was a source of
amusement for the gods.
‘Hey,’ Annabeth said, ‘I’m sorry for freaking out back at the water park,
Percy.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘It’s just…’ She shuddered. ‘Spiders.’
‘Because of the Arachne story,’ I guessed. ‘She got turned into a spider for
challenging your mom to a weaving contest, right?’
Annabeth nodded. ‘Arachne’s children have been taking revenge on the
children of Athena ever since. If there’s a spider within a mile of me, it’ll find
me. I hate the creepy little things. Anyway, I owe you.’
‘We’re a team, remember?’ I said. ‘Besides, Grover did the fancy flying.’
I thought he was asleep, but he mumbled from the corner, ‘I was pretty
amazing, wasn’t I?’
Annabeth and I laughed.
She pulled apart an Oreo, handed me half. ‘In the Iris message… did Luke
really say nothing?’
I munched my cookie and thought about how to answer. The conversation via
rainbow had bothered me all evening. ‘Luke said you and he go way back. He
also said Grover wouldn’t fail this time. Nobody would turn into a pine tree.’
In the dim bronze light of the sword blade, it was hard to read their
expressions.
Grover let out a mournful bray.
‘I should’ve told you the truth from the beginning.’ His voice trembled. ‘I
thought if you knew what a failure I was, you wouldn’t want me along.’
‘You were the satyr who tried to rescue Thalia, the daughter of Zeus.’
He nodded glumly.
And the other two half-bloods Thalia befriended, the ones who got safely to
camp…’ I looked at Annabeth. ‘That was you and Luke, wasn’t it?’
She put down her Oreo, uneaten. ‘Like you said, Percy, a seven-year-old halfblood wouldn’t have made it very far alone. Athena guided me towards help.
Thalia was twelve. Luke was fourteen. They’d both run away from home, like
me. They were happy to take me with them. They were… amazing monsterfighters, even without training. We travelled north from Virginia without any real
plans, fending off monsters for about two weeks before Grover found us.’
‘I was supposed to escort Thalia to camp,’ he said, sniffling. ‘Only Thalia. I
had strict orders from Chiron: don’t do anything that would slow down the
rescue. We knew Hades was after her, see, but I couldn’t just leave Luke and
Annabeth by themselves. I thought… I thought I could lead all three of them to
safety. It was my fault the Kindly Ones caught up with us. I froze. I got scared
on the way back to camp and took some wrong turns. If I’d just been a little
quicker…’
‘Stop it,’ Annabeth said. ‘No one blames you. Thalia didn’t blame you either.’
‘She sacrificed herself to save us,’ he said miserably. ‘Her death was my fault.
The Council of Cloven Elders said so.’
‘Because you wouldn’t leave two other half-bloods behind?’ I said. ‘That’s not
fair.’
‘Percy’s right,’ Annabeth said. ‘I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you,
Grover. Neither would Luke. We don’t care what the council says.’
Grover kept sniffling in the dark. ‘It’s just my luck. I’m the lamest satyr ever,
and I find the two most powerful half-bloods of the century, Thalia and Percy.’
‘You’re not lame,’ Annabeth insisted. ‘You’ve got more courage than any
satyr I’ve ever met. Name one other who would dare go to the Underworld. I bet
Percy is really glad you’re here right now.’
She kicked me in the shin.
‘Yeah,’ I said, which I would’ve done even without the kick. ‘It’s not luck that
you found Thalia and me, Grover. You’ve got the biggest heart of any satyr ever.
You’re a natural searcher. That’s why you’ll be the one who finds Pan.’
I heard a deep, satisfied sigh. I waited for Grover to say something, but his
breathing only got heavier. When the sound turned to snoring, I realized he’d
fallen sleep.
‘How does he do that?’ I marvelled.
‘I don’t know,’ Annabeth said. ‘But that was really a nice thing you told him.’
‘I meant it.’
We rode in silence for a few miles, bumping around on the feed sacks. The
zebra munched a turnip. The lion licked the last of the hamburger meat off his
lips and looked at me hopefully.
Annabeth rubbed her necklace like she was thinking deep, strategic thoughts.
‘That pine-tree bead,’ I said. ‘Is that from your first year?’
She looked. She hadn’t realized what she was doing.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Every August, the counsellors pick the most important event
of the summer, and they paint it on that year’s beads. I’ve got Thalia’s pine tree,
a Greek trireme on fire, a centaur in a prom dress – now that was a weird
summer…’
‘And the college ring is your father’s?’
‘That’s none of your –’ She stopped herself. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’
‘You don’t have to tell me.’
‘No… it’s okay.’ She took a shaky breath. ‘My dad sent it to me folded up in a
letter, two summers ago. The ring was, like, his main keepsake from Athena. He
wouldn’t have got through his doctoral programme at Harvard without her…
That’s a long story. Anyway, he said he wanted me to have it. He apologized for
being a jerk, said he loved me and missed me. He wanted me to come home and
live with him.’
‘That doesn’t sound so bad.’
‘Yeah, well… the problem was, I believed him. I tried to go home for that
school year, but my stepmom was the same as ever. She didn’t want her kids put
in danger by living with a freak. Monsters attacked. We argued. Monsters
attacked. We argued. I didn’t even make it through winter break. I called Chiron
and came right back to Camp Half-Blood.’
‘You think you’ll ever try living with your dad again?’
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Please. I’m not into self-inflicted pain.’
‘You shouldn’t give up,’ I told her. ‘You should write him a letter or
something.’
‘Thanks for the advice,’ she said coldly, ‘but my father’s made his choice
about who he wants to live with.’
We passed another few miles of silence.
‘So if the gods fight,’ I said, ‘will things line up the way they did with the
Trojan War? Will it be Athena versus Poseidon?’
She put her head against the backpack Ares had given us, and closed her eyes.
‘I don’t know what my mom will do. I just know I’ll fight next to you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because you’re my friend, Seaweed Brain. Any more stupid questions?’
I couldn’t think of an answer for that. Fortunately I didn’t have to. Annabeth
was asleep.
I had trouble following her example, with Grover snoring and an albino lion
staring hungrily at me, but eventually I closed my eyes.
***
My nightmare started out as something I’d dreamed a million times before: I was
being forced to take a standardized test while wearing a straitjacket. All the other
kids were going out to recess, and the teacher kept saying, Come on, Percy.
You’re not stupid are you? Pick up your pencil.
Then the dream strayed from the usual.
I looked over at the next desk and saw a girl sitting there, also wearing a strait
jacket. She was my age, with unruly black, punk-style hair, dark eyeliner around
her stormy green eyes, and freckles across her nose. Somehow, I knew who she
was. She was Thalia, daughter of Zeus.
She struggled against the straitjacket, glared at me in frustration and snapped,
Well, Seaweed Brain? One of us has to get out of here.
She’s right, my dream-self thought. I’m going back to that cavern. I’m going
to give Hades a piece of my mind.
The straitjacket melted off me. I fell through the classroom floor. The
teacher’s voice changed until it was cold and evil, echoing from the depths of a
great chasm.
Percy Jackson, it said. Yes, the exchange went well, I see.
I was back in the dark cavern, spirits of the dead drifting around me. Unseen
in the pit, the monstrous thing was speaking, but this time it wasn’t addressing
me. The numbing power of its voice seemed directed somewhere else.
And he suspects nothing? it asked.
Another voice, one I almost recognized, answered at my shoulder. Nothing,
my lord. He is as ignorant as the rest.
I looked over, but no one was there. The speaker was invisible.
Deception upon deception, the thing in the pit mused aloud. Excellent.
Truly, my lord, said the voice next to me, you are well-named the Crooked
One. But was it really necessary? I could have brought you what I stole directly
–
You? the monster said in scorn. You have already shown your limits. You
would have failed me completely had I not intervened.
But, my lord –
Peace, little servant. Our six months have bought us much. Zeus’s anger has
grown. Poseidon has played his most desperate card. Now we shall use it against
him. Shortly you shall have the reward you wish, and your revenge. As soon as
both items are delivered into my hands… but wait. He is here.
What? The invisible servant suddenly sounded tense. You summoned him, my
lord?
No. The full force of the monster’s attention was now pouring over me,
freezing me in place. Blast his father’s blood – he is too changeable, too
unpredictable. The boy brought himself hither.
Impossible! the servant cried.
For a weakling such as you, perhaps, the voice snarled. Then its cold power
turned back on me. So… you wish to dream of your quest, young half-blood?
Then I will oblige.
The scene changed.
I was standing in a vast throne room with black marble walls and bronze
floors. The empty, horrid throne was made from human bones fused together.
Standing at the foot of the dais was my mother, frozen in shimmering golden
light, her arms outstretched.
I tried to step towards her, but my legs wouldn’t move. I reached for her, only
to realize that my hands were withering to bones. Grinning skeletons in Greek
armour crowded around me, draping me with silk robes, wreathing my head with
laurels that smoked with Chimera poison, burning into my scalp.
The evil voice began to laugh. Hail, the conquering hero!
I woke with a start.
Grover was shaking my shoulder. ‘The truck’s stopped,’ he said. ‘We think
they’re coming to check on the animals.’
‘Hide!’ Annabeth hissed.
She had it easy. She just put on her magic cap and disappeared. Grover and I
had to dive behind feed sacks and hope we looked like turnips.
The trailer doors creaked open. Sunlight and heat poured in.
‘Man!’ one of the truckers said, waving his hand in front of his ugly nose. ‘I
wish I hauled appliances.’ He climbed inside and poured some water from a jug
into the animals’ dishes.
‘You hot, big boy?’ he asked the lion, then splashed the rest of the bucket right
in the lion’s face.
The lion roared in indignation.
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ the man said.
Next to me, under the turnip sacks, Grover tensed. For a peace-loving
herbivore, he looked downright murderous.
The trucker threw the antelope a squashed-looking Happy Meal bag. He
smirked at the zebra. ‘How ya doin’, Stripes? Least we’ll be getting rid of you
this stop. You like magic shows? You’re gonna love this one. They’re gonna saw
you in half!’
The zebra, wild-eyed with fear, looked straight at me.
There was no sound, but as clear as day, I heard it say: Free me, lord. Please.
I was too stunned to react.
There was a loud knock, knock, knock on the side of the trailer.
The trucker inside with us yelled, ‘What do you want, Eddie?’
A voice outside – it must’ve been Eddie’s – shouted back, ‘Maurice? What’d
ya say?’
‘What are you banging for?’
Knock, knock, knock.
Outside, Eddie yelled, ‘What banging?’
Our guy Maurice rolled his eyes and went back outside, cursing at Eddie for
being an idiot.
A second later, Annabeth appeared next to me. She must’ve done the banging
to get Maurice out of the trailer. She said, ‘This transport business can’t be
legal.’
‘No kidding,’ Grover said. He paused, as if listening. ‘The lion says these guys
are animal smugglers!’
That’s right, the zebra’s voice said in my mind.
‘We’ve got to free them!’ Grover said. He and Annabeth both looked at me,
waiting for my lead.
I’d heard the zebra talk, but not the lion. Why? Maybe it was another learning
disability… I could only understand zebras? Then I thought: horses. What had
Annabeth said about Poseidon creating horses? Was a zebra close enough to a
horse? Was that why I could understand it?
The zebra said, Open my cage, lord. Please. I’ll be fine after that.
Outside, Eddie and Maurice were still yelling at each other, but I knew they’d
be coming inside to torment the animals again any minute. I grabbed Riptide and
slashed the lock off the zebra’s cage.
The zebra burst out. It turned to me and bowed. Thank you, lord.
Grover held up his hands and said something to the zebra in goat talk, like a
blessing.
Just as Maurice was poking his head back inside to check out the noise, the
zebra leaped over him and into the street. There was yelling and screaming and
cars honking. We rushed to the doors of the trailer in time to see the zebra
galloping down a wide boulevard lined with hotels and casinos and neon signs.
We’d just released a zebra in Las Vegas.
Maurice and Eddie ran after it, with a few policemen running after them,
shouting, ‘Hey! You need a permit for that!’
‘Now would be a good time to leave,’ Annabeth said.
‘The other animals first,’ Grover said.
I cut the locks with my sword. Grover raised his hands and spoke the same
goat-blessing he’d used for the zebra.
‘Good luck,’ I told the animals. The antelope and the lion burst out of their
cages and went off together into the streets.
Some tourists screamed. Most just backed off and took pictures, probably
thinking it was some kind of stunt by one of the casinos.
‘Will the animals be okay?’ I asked Grover. ‘I mean, the desert and all –’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I placed a satyr’s sanctuary on them.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning they’ll reach the wild safely,’ he said. ‘They’ll find water, food,
shade, whatever they need until they find a safe place to live.’
‘Why can’t you place a blessing like that on us?’ I asked.
‘It only works on wild animals.’
‘So it would only affect Percy,’ Annabeth reasoned.
‘Hey!’ I protested.
‘Kidding,’ she said. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of this filthy truck.’
We stumbled out into the desert afternoon. It was forty degrees, easy, and we
must’ve looked like deep-fried vagrants, but everybody was too interested in the
wild animals to pay us much attention.
We passed the Monte Carlo and the MGM. We passed pyramids, a pirate ship
and the Statue of Liberty, which was a pretty small replica, but still made me
homesick.
I wasn’t sure what we were looking for. Maybe just a place to get out of the
heat for a few minutes, find a sandwich and a glass of lemonade, make a new
plan for getting west.
We must have taken a wrong turn, because we found ourselves at a dead end,
standing in front of the Lotus Hotel and Casino. The entrance was a huge neon
flower, the petals lighting up and blinking. No one was going in or out, but the
glittering chrome doors were open, spilling out air conditioning that smelled like
flowers – lotus blossom, maybe. I’d never smelled one, so I wasn’t sure.
The doorman smiled at us. ‘Hey, kids. You look tired. You want to come in
and sit down?’
I’d learned to be suspicious, the last week or so. I figured anybody might be a
monster or a god. You just couldn’t tell. But this guy was normal. One look at
him, and I could see. Besides, I was so relieved to hear somebody who sounded
sympathetic that I nodded and said we’d love to come in. Inside, we took one
look around, and Grover said, ‘Whoa.’
The whole lobby was a giant game room. And I’m not talking about cheesy
old Pac-Man games or slot machines. There was an indoor water slide snaking
around the glass elevator, which went straight up at least forty floors. There was
a climbing wall on the side of one building, and an indoor bungee-jumping
bridge. There were virtual-reality suits with working laser guns. And hundreds
of video games, each one the size of a widescreen TV. Basically, you name it,
this place had it. There were a few other kids playing, but not that many. No
waiting for any of the games. There were waitresses and snack bars all around,
serving every kind of food you can imagine.
‘Hey!’ a bellhop said. At least I guessed he was a bellhop. He wore a whiteand-yellow Hawaiian shirt with lotus designs, shorts and flip-flops. ‘Welcome to
the Lotus Casino. Here’s your room key.’
I stammered, ‘Um, but…’
‘No, no,’ he said, laughing. ‘The bill’s taken care of. No extra charges, no tips.
Just go on up to the top floor, room 4001. If you need anything, like extra
bubbles for the hot tub, or skeet targets for the shooting range, or whatever, just
call the front desk. Here are your LotusCash cards. They work in the restaurants
and on all the games and rides.’
He handed us each a green plastic credit card.
I knew there must be some mistake. Obviously he thought we were some
millionaire’s kids. But I took the card and said, ‘How much is on here?’
His eyebrows knit together. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, when does it run out of cash?’
He laughed. ‘Oh, you’re making a joke. Hey, that’s cool. Enjoy your stay.’
We took the elevator upstairs and checked out our room. It was a suite with
three separate bedrooms and a bar stocked with candy, sodas and crisps. A
hotline to room service. Fluffy towels and waterbeds with feather pillows. A bigscreen television with satellite and high-speed Internet. The balcony had its own
hot tub and, sure enough, there was a skeet-shooting machine and a shotgun, so
you could launch clay pigeons right out over the Las Vegas skyline and plug
them with your gun. I didn’t see how that could be legal, but I thought it was
pretty cool. The view over the Strip and the desert was amazing, though I
doubted we’d ever have time to look at the view with a room like this.
‘Oh, goodness,’ Annabeth said. ‘This place is…’
‘Sweet,’ Grover said. ‘Absolutely sweet.’
There were clothes in the closet, and they fitted me. I frowned, thinking that
this was a little strange.
I threw Ares’s backpack in the trash can. Wouldn’t need that any more. When
we left, I could just charge a new one at the hotel store.
I took a shower, which felt awesome after a week of grimy travel. I changed
clothes, ate a bag of crisps, drank three Cokes and came out feeling better than I
had in a long time. In the back of my mind, some small problem kept nagging
me. I’d had a dream or something… I needed to talk to my friends. But I was
sure it could wait.
I came out of the bedroom and found that Annabeth and Grover had also
showered and changed clothes. Grover was eating crisps to his heart’s content,
while Annabeth cranked up the National Geographic Channel.
‘All those stations,’ I told her, ‘and you turn on National Geographic. Are you
insane?’
‘It’s interesting.’
‘I feel good,’ Grover said. ‘I love this place.’
Without his even realizing it, the wings sprouted out of his shoes and lifted
him a foot off the ground, then back down again.
‘So what now?’ Annabeth asked. ‘Sleep?’
Grover and I looked at each other and grinned. We both held up our green
plastic LotusCash cards.
‘Play time,’ I said.
I couldn’t remember the last time I had so much fun. I came from a relatively
poor family. Our idea of a splurge was eating out at Burger King and renting a
video. A five-star Vegas hotel? Forget it.
I bungee-jumped the lobby five or six times, did the waterslide, snowboarded
the artificial ski slope and played virtual-reality laser tag and FBI sharpshooter. I
saw Grover a few times, going from game to game. He really liked the reverse
hunter thing – where the deer go out and shoot the rednecks. I saw Annabeth
playing trivia games and other brainiac stuff. They had this huge 3-D sim game
where you build your own city, and you could actually see the holographic
buildings rise on the display board. I didn’t think much of it, but Annabeth loved
it.
I’m not sure when I first realized something was wrong.
Probably, it was when I noticed the guy standing next to me at VR
sharpshooters. He was about thirteen, I guess, but his clothes were weird. I
thought he was some Elvis impersonator’s son. He wore bell-bottoms and a red
T-shirt with black piping, and his hair was permed and gelled like a New Jersey
girl’s on homecoming night.
We played a game of sharpshooters together and he said, ‘Groovy, man. Been
here two weeks, and the games keep getting better and better.’
Groovy?
Later, while we were talking, I said something “rocked”, and he looked at me
kind of puzzled, as if he’d never heard the word used that way before.
He said his name was Darrin, but as soon as I started asking him questions he
got bored with me and started to go back to the computer screen.
I said, ‘Hey, Darrin?’
‘What?’
‘What year is it?’
He frowned at me. ‘In the game?’
‘No. In real life.’
He had to think about it. ‘1977.’
‘No,’ I said, getting a little scared. ‘Really.’
‘Hey, man. Bad vibes. I got a game happening.’
After that he totally ignored me.
I started talking to people, and I found it wasn’t easy. They were glued to the
TV screen, or the video game, or their food, or whatever. I found a guy who told
me it was 1985. Another guy told me it was 1993. They all claimed they hadn’t
been in here very long, a few days, a few weeks at most. They didn’t really know
and they didn’t care.
Then it occurred to me: how long had I been here? It seemed like only a
couple of hours, but was it?
I tried to remember why we were here. We were going to Los Angeles. We
were supposed to find the entrance to the Underworld. My mother… for a scary
second, I had trouble remembering her name. Sally. Sally Jackson. I had to find
her. I had to stop Hades from causing World War III.
I found Annabeth still building her city.
‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
No response.
I shook her. ‘Annabeth?’
She looked up, annoyed. ‘What?’
‘We need to leave.’
‘Leave? What are you talking about? I’ve just got the towers –’
‘This place is a trap.’
She didn’t respond until I shook her again. ‘What?’
‘Listen. The Underworld. Our quest!’
‘Oh, come on, Percy. Just a few more minutes.’
‘Annabeth, there are people here from 1977. Kids who have never aged. You
check in, and you stay forever.’
‘So?’ she asked. ‘Can you imagine a better place?’
I grabbed her wrist and yanked her away from the game.
‘Hey!’ She screamed and hit me, but nobody else even bothered looking at us.
They were too busy.
I made her look directly in my eyes. I said, ‘Spiders. Large, hairy spiders.’
That jarred her. Her vision cleared. ‘Oh my gods,’ she said. ‘How long have
we –’
‘I don’t know, but we’ve got to find Grover.’
We went searching, and found him still playing Virtual Deer Hunter.
‘Grover!’ we both shouted.
He said, ‘Die, human! Die, silly polluting nasty person!’
‘Grover!’
He turned the plastic gun on me and started clicking, as if I were just another
image from the screen.
I looked at Annabeth, and together we took Grover by the arms and dragged
him away. His flying shoes sprang to life and started tugging his legs in the other
direction as he shouted, ‘No! I just got to a new level! No!’
The Lotus bellhop hurried up to us. ‘Well, now, are you ready for your
platinum cards?’
‘We’re leaving,’ I told him.
‘Such a shame,’ he said, and I got the feeling that he really meant it, that we’d
be breaking his heart if we went. ‘We just added an entire new floor full of
games for platinum-card members.’
He held out the cards, and I wanted one. I knew that if I took one, I’d never
leave. I’d stay here, happy forever, playing games forever, and soon I’d forget
my mom, and my quest, and maybe even my own name. I’d be playing virtual
rifleman with groovy Disco Darrin forever.
Grover reached for the card, but Annabeth yanked back his arm and said, ‘No,
thanks.’
We walked towards the door, and as we did, the smell of the food and the
sounds of the games seemed to get more and more inviting. I thought about our
room upstairs. We could just stay the night, sleep in a real bed for once…
Then we burst through the doors of the Lotus Casino and ran down the
sidewalk. It felt like afternoon, about the same time of day we’d gone into the
casino, but something was wrong. The weather had completely changed. It was
stormy, with heat lightning flashing out in the desert.
Ares’s backpack was slung over my shoulder, which was odd, because I was
sure I had thrown it in the trash can in room 4001, but at the moment I had other
problems to worry about.
I ran to the nearest newspaper stand and read the year first. Thank the gods, it
was the same year it had been when we went in. Then I noticed the date: June
twentieth.
We had been in the Lotus Casino for five days.
We had only one day left until the summer solstice. One day to complete our
quest.
17
We Shop for Waterbeds
It was Annabeth’s idea.
She loaded us into the back of a Vegas taxi as if we actually had money, and
told the driver, ‘Los Angeles, please.’
The cabbie chewed his cigar and sized us up. ‘That’s three hundred miles. For
that, you gotta pay up front.’
‘You accept casino debit cards?’ Annabeth asked.
He shrugged. ‘Some of’ em. Same as credit cards. I gotta swipe ’em through,
first.’
Annabeth handed him her green LotusCash card.
He looked at it sceptically.
‘Swipe it,’ Annabeth invited.
He did.
His meter machine started rattling. The lights flashed. Finally an infinity
symbol came up next to the dollar sign.
The cigar fell out of the driver’s mouth. He looked back at us, his eyes wide.
‘Where to in Los Angeles… uh, Your Highness?’
‘The Santa Monica pier.’ Annabeth sat up a little straighter. I could tell she
liked the ‘Your Highness’ thing. ‘Get us there fast, and you can keep the
change.’
Maybe she shouldn’t have told him that.
The cab’s speedometer never dipped below ninety-five the whole way through
the Mojave Desert.
On the road, we had plenty of time to talk. I told Annabeth and Grover about my
latest dream, but the details got sketchier the more I tried to remember them. The
Lotus Casino seemed to have short-circuited my memory. I couldn’t recall what
the invisible servant’s voice had sounded like, though I was sure it was
somebody I knew. The servant had called the monster in the pit something other
than ‘my lord’… some special name or title…
‘The Silent One?’ Annabeth suggested. ‘The Rich One? Both of those are
nicknames for Hades.’
‘Maybe…’ I said, though neither sounded quite right.
‘That throne room sounds like Hades’s,’ Grover said. ‘That’s the way it’s
usually described.’
I shook my head. ‘Something’s wrong. The throne room wasn’t the main part
of the dream. And that voice from the pit… I don’t know. It just didn’t feel like a
god’s voice.’
Annabeth’s eyes widened.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Oh… nothing. I was just – No, it has to be Hades. Maybe he sent this thief,
this invisible person, to get the master bolt, and something went wrong –’
‘Like what?’
‘I – I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But if he stole Zeus’s symbol of power from
Olympus, and the gods were hunting him, I mean, a lot of things could go
wrong. So this thief had to hide the bolt, or he lost it somehow. Anyway, he
failed to bring it to Hades. That’s what the voice said in your dream, right? The
guy failed. That would explain what the Furies were searching for when they
came after us on the bus. Maybe they thought we had retrieved the bolt.’
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with her. She looked pale.
‘But if I’d already retrieved the bolt,’ I said, ‘why would I be travelling to the
Underworld?’
‘To threaten Hades,’ Grover suggested. ‘To bribe or blackmail him into getting
your mom back.’
I whistled. ‘You have evil thoughts for a goat.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘But the thing in the pit said it was waiting for two items,’ I said. ‘If the master
bolt is one, what’s the other?’
Grover shook his head, clearly mystified.
Annabeth was looking at me as if she knew my next question, and was silently
willing me not to ask it.
‘You have an idea what might be in that pit, don’t you?’ I asked her. ‘I mean,
if it isn’t Hades?’
‘Percy… let’s not talk about it. Because if it isn’t Hades… No. It has to be
Hades.’
Wasteland rolled by. We passed a sign that said: CALIFORNIA STATE LINE,
12 MILES.
I got the feeling I was missing one simple, critical piece of information. It was
like when I stared at a common word I should know, but I couldn’t make sense
of it because one or two letters were floating around. The more I thought about
my quest, the more I was sure that confronting Hades wasn’t the real answer.
There was something else going on, something even more dangerous.
The problem was: we were hurtling towards the Underworld at ninety-five
miles an hour, betting that Hades had the master bolt. If we got there and found
out we were wrong, we wouldn’t have time to correct ourselves. The solstice
deadline would pass and war would begin.
‘The answer is in the Underworld,’ Annabeth assured me. ‘You saw spirits of
the dead, Percy. There’s only one place that could be. We’re doing the right
thing.’
She tried to boost our morale by suggesting clever strategies for getting into
the Land of the Dead, but my heart wasn’t in it. There were just too many
unknown factors. It was like cramming for a test without knowing the subject.
And believe me, I’d done that enough times.
The cab sped west. Every gust of wind through Death Valley sounded like a
spirit of the dead. Every time the brakes hissed on an eighteen-wheeler, it
reminded me of Echidna’s reptilian voice.
At sunset, the taxi dropped us at the beach in Santa Monica. It looked exactly the
way L.A. beaches do in the movies, only it smelled worse. There were carnival
rides lining the pier, palm trees lining the sidewalks, homeless guys sleeping in
the sand dunes and surfer dudes waiting for the perfect wave.
Grover, Annabeth and I walked down to the edge of the surf.
‘What now?’ Annabeth asked.
The Pacific was turning gold in the setting sun. I thought about how long it
had been since I’d stood on the beach at Montauk, on the opposite side of the
country, looking out at a different sea.
How could there be a god who could control all that? What did my science
teacher used to say – two-thirds of the earth’s surface was covered in water?
How could I be the son of someone that powerful?
I stepped into the surf.
‘Percy?’ Annabeth said. ‘What are you doing?’
I kept walking, up to my waist, then my chest.
She called after me, ‘You know how polluted that water is? There’re all kinds
of toxic –’
That’s when my head went under.
I held my breath at first. It’s difficult to intentionally inhale water. Finally I
couldn’t stand it any more. I gasped. Sure enough, I could breathe normally.
I walked down into the shoals. I shouldn’t have been able to see through the
murk, but somehow I could tell where everything was. I could sense the rolling
texture of the bottom. I could make out sand-dollar colonies dotting the
sandbars. I could even see the currents, warm and cold streams swirling together.
I felt something rub against my leg. I looked down and almost shot out of the
water like a ballistic missile. Sliding along beside me was a two-metre-long
mako shark.
But the thing wasn’t attacking. It was nuzzling me. Heeling like a dog.
Tentatively, I touched its dorsal fin. It bucked a little, as if inviting me to hold
tighter. I grabbed the fin with both hands. It took off, pulling me along. The
shark carried me down into the darkness. It deposited me at the edge of the
ocean proper, where the sand bank dropped off into a huge chasm. It was like
standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon at midnight, not being able to see
much, but knowing the void was right there.
The surface shimmered maybe fifty metres above. I knew I should’ve been
crushed by the pressure. Then again, I shouldn’t have been able to breathe. I
wondered if there was a limit to how deep I could go, if I could sink straight to
the bottom of the Pacific.
Then I saw something glimmering in the darkness below, growing bigger and
brighter as it rose towards me. A woman’s voice, like my mother’s, called:
‘Percy Jackson.’
As she got closer, her shape became clearer. She had flowing black hair, a
dress made of green silk. Light flickered around her, and her eyes were so
distractingly beautiful I hardly noticed the stallion-sized sea horse she was
riding.
She dismounted. The sea horse and the mako shark whisked off and started
playing something that looked like tag. The underwater lady smiled at me.
‘You’ve come far, Percy Jackson. Well done.’
I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I bowed. ‘You’re the woman who spoke to
me in the Mississippi River.’
‘Yes, child. I am a Nereid, a spirit of the sea. It was not easy to appear so far
upriver, but the naiads, my freshwater cousins, helped sustain my life force.
They honour Lord Poseidon, though they do not serve in his court.’
‘And… you serve in Poseidon’s court?’
She nodded. ‘It has been many years since a child of the Sea God has been
born. We have watched you with great interest.’
Suddenly I remembered faces in the waves off Montauk Beach when I was a
little boy, reflections of smiling women. Like so many of the weird things in my
life, I’d never given it much thought before.
‘If my father is so interested in me,’ I said, ‘why isn’t he here? Why doesn’t he
speak to me?’
A cold current rose out of the depths.
‘Do not judge the Lord of the Sea too harshly,’ the Nereid told me. ‘He stands
at the brink of an unwanted war. He has much to occupy his time. Besides, he is
forbidden to help you directly. The gods may not show such favouritism.’
‘Even to their own children?’
‘Especially to them. The gods can work by indirect influence only. That is
why I give you a warning, and a gift.’
She held out her hand. Three white pearls flashed in her palm.
‘I know you journey to Hades’s realm,’ she said. ‘Few mortals have ever done
this and survived: Orpheus, who had great musical skill; Hercules, who had great
strength; Houdini, who could escape even the depths of Tartarus. Do you have
these talents?’
‘Um… no, ma’am.’
‘Ah, but you have something else, Percy. You have gifts you have only begun
to know. The oracles have foretold a great and terrible future for you, should you
survive to manhood. Poseidon would not have you die before your time.
Therefore take these, and when you are in need, smash a pearl at your feet.’
‘What will happen?’
‘That,’ she said, ‘depends on the need. But remember: what belongs to the sea
will always return to the sea.’
‘What about the warning?’
Her eyes flickered with green light. ‘Go with what your heart tells you, or you
will lose all. Hades feeds on doubt and hopelessness. He will trick you if he can,
make you mistrust your own judgement. Once you are in his realm, he will never
willingly let you leave. Keep faith. Good luck, Percy Jackson.’
She summoned her sea horse and rode towards the void.
‘Wait!’ I called. ‘At the river, you said not to trust the gifts. What gifts?’
‘Goodbye, young hero,’ she called back, her voice fading into the depths. ‘You
must listen to your heart.’ She became a speck of glowing green, and then she
was gone.
I wanted to follow her down into the darkness. I wanted to see the court of
Poseidon. But I looked up at the sunset darkening on the surface. My friends
were waiting. We had so little time…
I kicked upwards towards the shore.
When I reached the beach, I told Grover and Annabeth what had happened,
and showed them the pearls.
Annabeth grimaced. ‘No gift comes without a price.’
‘They were free.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘“There is no such thing as a free lunch.” That’s an
ancient Greek saying that translated pretty well into American. There will be a
price. You wait.’
On that happy thought, we turned our backs on the sea.
With some spare change from Ares’s backpack, we took the bus into West
Hollywood. I showed the driver the Underworld address slip I’d taken from
Aunty Em’s Garden Gnome Emporium, but he’d never heard of DOA Recording
Studios.
‘You remind me of somebody I saw on TV’, he told me. ‘You a child actor or
something?’
‘Uh… I’m a stunt double… for a lot of child actors.’
‘Oh! That explains it.’
We thanked him and got off quickly at the next stop.
We wandered for miles on foot, looking for DOA. Nobody seemed to know
where it was. It didn’t appear in the phone book.
Twice, we ducked into alleys to avoid cop cars.
I froze in front of an appliance store window because a television was playing
an interview with somebody who looked very familiar – my stepdad, Smelly
Gabe. He was talking to Barbara Walters – I mean, as if he were some kind of
huge celebrity. She was interviewing him in our apartment, in the middle of a
poker game, and there was a young blonde lady sitting next to him, patting his
hand.
A fake tear glistened on his cheek. He was saying, ‘Honest, Ms Walters, if it
wasn’t for Sugar here, my grief counsellor. I’d be a wreck. My stepson took
everything I cared about. My wife… my Camaro… I – I’m sorry. I have trouble
talking about it.’
‘There you have it, America.’ Barbara Walters turned to the camera. ‘A man
torn apart. An adolescent boy with serious issues. Let me show you, again, the
last known photo of this troubled young fugitive, taken a week ago in Denver.’
The screen cut to a grainy shot of me, Annabeth and Grover standing outside
the Colorado diner, talking to Ares.
‘Who are the other children in this photo?’ Barbara Walters asked
dramatically. ‘Who is the man with them? Is Percy Jackson a delinquent, a
terrorist, or perhaps the brainwashed victim of a frightening new cult? When we
come back, we chat with a leading child psychologist. Stay tuned, America.’
‘C’mon,’ Grover told me. He hauled me away before I could punch a hole in
the appliance-store window.
It got dark, and hungry-looking characters started coming out on the streets to
play. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a New Yorker. I don’t scare easy. But L.A.
had a totally different feel from New York. Back home, everything seemed close.
It didn’t matter how big the city was, you could get anywhere without getting
lost. The street pattern and the subway made sense. There was a system to how
things worked. A kid could be safe as long as he wasn’t stupid.
L.A. wasn’t like that. It was spread out, chaotic, hard to move around. It
reminded me of Ares. It wasn’t enough for L.A. to be big; it had to prove it was
big by being loud and strange and difficult to navigate, too. I didn’t know how
we were ever going to find the entrance to the Underworld by tomorrow, the
summer solstice.
We walked past gangbangers, bums and street hawkers, who looked at us like
they were trying to figure if we were worth the trouble of mugging.
As we hurried passed the entrance of an alley, a voice from the darkness said,
‘Hey, you.’
Like an idiot, I stopped.
Before I knew it, we were surrounded. A gang of kids had circled us. Six of
them in all – white kids with expensive clothes and mean faces. Like the kids at
Yancy Academy: rich brats playing at being bad boys.
Instinctively, I uncapped Riptide.
When the sword appeared out of nowhere, the kids backed off, but their leader
was either really stupid or really brave, because he kept coming at me with a
switchblade.
I made the mistake of swinging.
The kid yelped. But he must’ve been one hundred percent mortal, because the
blade passed harmlessly right through his chest. He looked down. ‘What the…’
I figured I had about three seconds before his shock turned to anger. ‘Run!’ I
screamed at Annabeth and Grover.
We pushed two kids out of the way and raced down the street, not knowing
where we were going. We turned a sharp corner.
‘There!’ Annabeth shouted.
Only one store on the block looked open, its windows glaring with neon. The
sign above the door said something like: CRSTUY’S WATREBDE ALPACE.
‘Crusty’s Waterbed Palace?’ Grover translated.
It didn’t sound like a place I’d ever go except in an emergency, but this
definitely qualified.
We burst through the doors, ran behind a waterbed, and ducked. A split second
later, the gang kids ran past outside.
‘I think we lost them,’ Grover panted.
A voice behind us boomed, ‘Lost who?’
We all jumped.
Standing behind us was a guy who looked like a raptor in a leisure suit. He
was at least two metres tall, with absolutely no hair. He had grey leathery skin,
thick-lidded eyes, and a cold reptilian smile. He moved towards us slowly, but I
got the feeling he could move fast if he needed to.
His suit might’ve come from the Lotus Casino. It belonged back in the
seventies, big time. The shirt was silk paisley, unbuttoned halfway down his
hairless chest. The lapels on his velvet jacket were as wide as landing strips. The
silver chains around his neck – I couldn’t even count them.
‘I’m Crusty,’ he said, with a tartar-yellow smile.
I resisted the urge to say, Yes, you are.
‘Sorry to barge in,’ I told him. ‘We were just, um, browsing.’
‘You mean hiding from those no-good kids,’ he grumbled. ‘They hang around
every night. I get a lot of people in here, thanks to them. Say, you want to look at
a waterbed?’
I was about to say No, thanks, when he put a huge paw on my shoulder and
steered me deeper into the showroom.
There was every kind of waterbed you could imagine: different kinds of wood,
different patterns of sheets; queen-size, king-size, emperor-of-the-universe-size.
‘This is my most popular model.’ Crusty spread his hands proudly over a bed
covered with black satin sheets, with built-in Lava Lamps on the headboard. The
mattress vibrated, so it looked like oil-flavoured jelly.
‘Million-hand massage,’ Crusty told us. ‘Go on, try it out. Shoot, take a nap. I
don’t care. No business today, anyway.’
‘Um,’ I said, ‘I don’t think…’
‘Million-hand massage!’ Grover cried, and dived in. ‘Oh, you guys! This is
cool.’
‘Hmm,’ Crusty said, stroking his leathery chin. Almost, almost.’
‘Almost what?’ I asked.
He looked at Annabeth. ‘Do me a favour and try this one over here, honey.
Might fit.’
Annabeth said, ‘But what –’
He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder and led her over to the Safari
Deluxe model with teakwood lions carved into the frame and a leopard-patterned
bedspread. When Annabeth didn’t want to lie down, Crusty pushed her.
‘Hey!’ she protested.
Crusty snapped his fingers. ‘Ergo!’
Ropes sprang from the sides of the bed, lashing around Annabeth, holding her
to the mattress.
Grover tried to get up, but ropes sprang from his black-satin bed, too, and
lashed him down.
‘Not cool!’ he yelled, his voice vibrating from the million-hand massage. ‘Not
cool at all!’
The giant looked at Annabeth, then turned towards me and grinned. ‘Almost,
darn it.’
I tried to step away, but his hand shot out and clamped around the back of my
neck. ‘Whoa, kid. Don’t worry. We’ll find you one in a sec.’
‘Let my friends go.’
‘Oh, sure I will. But I got to make them fit, first.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All the beds are exactly six feet, see? Your friends are too short. Got to make
them fit.’
Annabeth and Grover kept struggling.
‘Can’t stand imperfect measurements,’ Crusty muttered. ‘Ergo!’
A new set of ropes leaped out from the top and bottom of the beds, wrapping
around Grover and Annabeth’s ankles, then around their armpits. The ropes
started tightening, pulling my friends from both ends.
‘Don’t worry,’ Crusty told me. ‘These are stretching jobs. Maybe eight extra
centimetres on their spines. They might even live. Now why don’t we find a bed
you like, huh?’
‘Percy!’ Grover yelled.
My mind was racing. I knew I couldn’t take on this giant waterbed salesman
alone. He would snap my neck before I ever got my sword out.
‘Your real name’s not Crusty, is it?’ I asked.
‘Legally, it’s Procrustes,’ he admitted.
‘The Stretcher,’ I said. I remembered the story: the giant who’d tried to kill
Theseus with over-hospitality on his way to Athens.
‘Yeah,’ the salesman said. ‘But who can pronounce “Procrustes”? Bad for
business. Now “Crusty”, anybody can say that.’
‘You’re right. It’s got a good ring to it.’
His eyes lit up. ‘You think so?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ I said. ‘And the workmanship on these beds? Fabulous!’
He grinned hugely, but his fingers didn’t loosen on my neck. ‘I tell my
customers that. Every time. Nobody bothers to look at the workmanship. How
many built-in Lava Lamp headboards have you seen?’
‘Not too many.’
‘That’s right!’
‘Percy!’ Annabeth yelled. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Don’t mind her,’ I told Procrustes. ‘She’s impossible.’
The giant laughed. ‘All my customers are. Never six feet exactly. So
inconsiderate. And then they complain about the fitting.’
‘What do you do if they’re longer than six feet?’
‘Oh, that happens all the time. It’s a simple fix.’
He let go of my neck, but before I could react, he reached behind a nearby
sales desk and brought out a huge double-bladed brass axe. He said, ‘I just centre
the subject as best I can and lop off whatever hangs over on either end.’
‘Ah,’ I said, swallowing hard. ‘Sensible.’
‘I’m so glad to come across an intelligent customer!’
The ropes were really stretching my friends now. Annabeth was turning pale.
Grover made gurgling sounds like a strangled goose.
‘So, Crusty…’ I said, trying to keep my voice light. I glanced at the sales tag
on the valentine-shaped Honeymoon Special. ‘Does this one really have
dynamic stabilizers to stop wave motion?’
‘Absolutely. Try it out.’
‘Yeah, maybe I will. But would it work even for a big guy like you? No waves
at all?’
‘Guaranteed.’
‘No way.’
‘Way.’
‘Show me.’
He sat down eagerly on the bed, patted the mattress. ‘No waves. See?’
I snapped my fingers. ‘Ergo.’
Ropes lashed around Crusty and flattened him against the mattress.
‘Hey!’ he yelled.
‘Centre him just right,’ I said.
The ropes readjusted themselves at my command. Crusty’s whole head stuck
out the top. His feet stuck out the bottom.
‘No!’ he said. ‘Wait! This is just a demo.’
I uncapped Riptide. ‘A few simple adjustments…’
I had no qualms about what I was about to do. If Crusty were human, I
couldn’t hurt him anyway. If he was a monster, he deserved to turn into dust for
a while.
‘You drive a hard bargain,’ he told me. ‘I’ll give you thirty percent off on
selected floor models!’
‘I think I’ll start with the top.’ I raised my sword.
‘No money down! No interest for six months!’
I swung the sword. Crusty stopped making offers.
I cut the ropes on the other beds. Annabeth and Grover got to their feet,
groaning and wincing and cursing me a lot.
‘You look taller,’ I said.
‘Very funny,’ Annabeth said. ‘Be faster next time.’
I looked at the bulletin board behind Crusty’s sales desk. There was an
advertisement for Hermes Delivery Service, and another for the All-New
Compendium of L.A. Area Monsters – ‘The only Monstrous Yellow Pages
you’ll ever need!’ Under that, a bright orange flier for DOA Recording Studios,
offering commissions for heroes’ souls. ‘We are always looking for new talent!’
DOA’s address was right underneath with a map.
‘Come on,’ I told my friends.
‘Give us a minute,’ Grover complained. ‘We were almost stretched to death!’
‘Then you’re ready for the Underworld,’ I said. ‘It’s only a block from here.’
18 Annabeth Does Obedience School
We stood in the shadows of Valencia Boulevard, looking up at gold letters etched
in black marble: DOA RECORDING STUDIOS.
Underneath, stencilled on the glass doors: NO SOLICITORS. NO
LOITERING. NO LIVING.
It was almost midnight, but the lobby was brightly lit and full of people.
Behind the security desk sat a tough-looking guard with sunglasses and an
earpiece.
I turned to my friends. ‘Okay. You remember the plan.’
‘The plan,’ Grover gulped. ‘Yeah. I love the plan.’
Annabeth said, ‘What happens if the plan doesn’t work?’
‘Don’t think negative.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘We’re entering the Land of the Dead, and I shouldn’t think
negative.’
I took the pearls out of my pocket, the three milky spheres the Nereid had
given me in Santa Monica. They didn’t seem like much of a backup in case
something went wrong.
Annabeth put her hand on my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Percy. You’re right, we’ll
make it. It’ll be fine.’
She gave Grover a nudge.
‘Oh, right!’ he chimed in. ‘We got this far. Well find the master bolt and save
your mom. No problem.’
I looked at them both, and felt really grateful. Only a few minutes before, I’d
almost got them stretched to death on deluxe waterbeds, and now they were
trying to be brave for my sake, trying to make me feel better.
I slipped the pearls back in my pocket. ‘Let’s whup some Underworld butt.’
We walked inside the DOA lobby.
Muzak played softly on hidden speakers. The carpet and walls were steel grey.
Pencil cactuses grew in the corners like skeleton hands. The furniture was black
leather, and every seat was taken. There were people sitting on couches, people
standing up, people staring out the windows or waiting for the elevator. Nobody
moved, or talked, or did much of anything. Out of the corner of my eye, I could
see them all just fine, but if I focused on any one of them in particular, they
started looking… transparent. I could see right through their bodies.
The security guard’s desk was a raised podium, so we had to look up at him.
He was tall and elegant, with chocolate-coloured skin and bleached-blond hair
shaved military style. He wore tortoiseshell shades and a silk Italian suit that
matched his hair. A black rose was pinned to his lapel under a silver name tag.
I read the name tag, then looked at him in bewilderment. ‘Your name is
Chiron?’
He leaned across the desk. I couldn’t see anything in his glasses except my
own reflection, but his smile was sweet and cold, like a pythons, right before it
eats you.
‘What a precious young lad.’ He had a strange accent – British, maybe, but
also as if he had learned English as a second language. ‘Tell me, mate, do I look
like a centaur?’
‘N-no.’
‘Sir,’ he added smoothly.
‘Sir,’ I said.
He pinched the name tag and ran his finger under the letters. ‘Can you read
this, mate? It says C-H-A-R-O-N. Say it with me: CARE-ON.’
‘Charon.’
‘Amazing! Now: Mr Charon.’
‘Mr Charon,’ I said.
‘Well done.’ He sat back. ‘I hate being confused with that old horse-man. And
now, how may I help you little dead ones?’
His question caught in my stomach like a fastball. I looked at Annabeth for
support.
‘We want to go the Underworld,’ she said.
Charon’s mouth twitched. ‘Well, that’s refreshing.’
‘It is?’ she asked.
‘Straightforward and honest. No screaming. No “There must be a mistake, Mr
Charon”.’ He looked us over. ‘How did you die, then?’
I nudged Grover.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Um… drowned… in the bathtub.’
‘All three of you?’ Charon asked.
We nodded.
‘Big bathtub.’ Charon looked mildly impressed. ‘I don’t suppose you have
coins for passage. Normally, with adults, you see, I could charge your American
Express, or add the ferry price to your last cable bill. But with children… alas,
you never die prepared. Suppose you’ll have to take a seat for a few centuries.’
‘Oh, but we have coins.’ I set three golden drachmas on the counter, part of
the stash I’d found in Crusty’s office desk.
‘Well, now…’ Charon moistened his lips. ‘Real drachmas. Real golden
drachmas. I haven’t seen these in…’
His fingers hovered greedily over the coins.
We were so close.
Then Charon looked at me. That cold stare behind his glasses seemed to bore
a hole through my chest. ‘Here now,’ he said. ‘You couldn’t read my name
correctly. Are you dyslexic, lad?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m dead.’
Charon leaned forward and took a sniff. ‘You’re not dead. I should’ve known.
You’re a godling.’
‘We have to get to the Underworld,’ I insisted.
Charon made a growling sound deep in his throat.
Immediately, all the people in the waiting room got up and started pacing,
agitated, lighting cigarettes, running hands through their hair, or checking their
wristwatches.
‘Leave while you can,’ Charon told us. ‘I’ll just take these and forget I saw
you.’
He started to go for the coins, but I snatched them back.
‘No service, no tip.’ I tried to sound braver than I felt.
Charon growled again – a deep, blood-chilling sound. The spirits of the dead
started pounding on the elevator doors.
‘It’s a shame, too,’ I sighed. ‘We had more to offer.’
I held up the entire bag from Crusty’s stash. I took out a fistful of drachmas
and let the coins spill through my fingers.
Charon’s growl changed into something more like a lion’s purr. ‘Do you think
I can be bought, godling? Eh… just out of curiosity, how much have you got
there?’
‘A lot,’ I said. ‘I bet Hades doesn’t pay you well enough for such hard work.’
‘Oh, you don’t know the half of it. How would you like to babysit these spirits
all day? Always “Please don’t let me be dead” or “Please let me across for free”.
I haven’t had a pay raise in three thousand years. Do you imagine suits like this
come cheap?’
‘You deserve better,’ I agreed. ‘A little appreciation. Respect. Good pay.’
With each word, I stacked another gold coin on the counter.
Charon glanced down at his silk Italian jacket, as if imagining himself in
something even better. ‘I must say, lad, you’re making some sense now. Just a
little.’
I stacked another few coins. ‘I could mention a pay raise while I’m talking to
Hades.’
He sighed. ‘The boat’s almost full, anyway. I might as well add you three and
be off.’
He stood, scooped up our money, and said, ‘Come along.’
We pushed through the crowd of waiting spirits, who started grabbing at our
clothes like the wind, their voices whispering things I couldn’t make out. Charon
shoved them out of the way, grumbling, ‘Freeloaders.’
He escorted us into the elevator, which was already crowded with souls of the
dead, each one holding a green boarding pass. Charon grabbed two spirits who
were trying to get on with us and pushed them back into the lobby.
‘Right. Now, no one get any ideas while I’m gone,’ he announced to the
waiting room. ‘And if anyone moves the dial off my easy-listening station again,
I’ll make sure you’re here for another thousand years. Understand?’
He shut the doors. He put a key card into a slot in the elevator panel and we
started to descend.
‘What happens to the spirits waiting in the lobby?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Nothing,’ Charon said.
‘For how long?’
‘Forever, or until I’m feeling generous.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That’s… fair.’
Charon raised an eyebrow. ‘Whoever said death was fair, young miss? Wait
until it’s your turn. You’ll die soon enough, where you’re going.’
‘We’ll get out alive,’ I said.
‘Ha.’
I got a sudden dizzy feeling. We weren’t going down any more, but forward.
The air turned misty. Spirits around me started changing shape. Their modern
clothes flickered, turning into grey hooded robes. The floor of the elevator began
swaying.
I blinked hard. When I opened my eyes, Charon’s creamy Italian suit had been
replaced by a long black robe. His tortoiseshell glasses were gone. Where his
eyes should’ve been were empty sockets – like Ares’s eyes, except Charon’s
were totally dark, full of night and death and despair.
He saw me looking, and said, ‘Well?’
‘Nothing,’ I managed.
I thought he was grinning, but that wasn’t it. The flesh of his face was
becoming transparent, letting me see straight through to his skull.
The floor kept swaying.
Grover said, ‘I think I’m getting seasick.’
When I blinked again, the elevator wasn’t an elevator any more. We were
standing in a wooden barge. Charon was poling us across a dark, oily river,
swirling with bones, dead fish and other, stranger things – plastic dolls, crushed
carnations, soggy diplomas with gilt edges.
‘The River Styx,’ Annabeth murmured. ‘It’s so…’
‘Polluted,’ Charon said. ‘For thousands of years, you humans have been
throwing in everything as you come across – hopes, dreams, wishes that never
came true. Irresponsible waste management, if you ask me.’
Mist curled off the filthy water. Above us, almost lost in the gloom, was a
ceiling of stalactites. Ahead, the far shore glimmered with greenish light, the
colour of poison.
Panic closed up my throat. What was I doing here? These people around me…
they were dead.
Annabeth grabbed hold of my hand. Under normal circumstances, this
would’ve embarrassed me, but I understood how she felt. She wanted
reassurance that somebody else was alive on this boat.
I found myself muttering a prayer, though I wasn’t quite sure who I was
praying to. Down here, only one god mattered, and he was the one I had come to
confront.
The shoreline of the Underworld came into view. Craggy rocks and black
volcanic sand stretched inland about fifty metres to the base of a high stone wall,
which marched off in either direction as far as we could see. A sound came from
somewhere nearby in the green gloom, echoing off the stones – the howl of a
large animal.
‘Old Three-Face is hungry,’ Charon said. His smile turned skeletal in the
greenish light. ‘Bad luck for you, godlings.’
The bottom of our boat slid onto the black sand. The dead began to disembark.
A woman holding a little girls hand. An old man and an old woman hobbling
along arm in arm. A boy no older than I was, shuffling silently along in his grey
robe.
Charon said, ‘I’d wish you luck, mate, but there isn’t any down here. Mind
you, don’t forget to mention my pay raise.’
He counted our golden coins into his pouch, then took up his pole. He warbled
something that sounded like a Barry Manilow song as he ferried the empty barge
back across the river.
We followed the spirits up a well-worn path.
I’m not sure what I was expecting – Pearly Gates, or a big black portcullis, or
something. But the entrance to the Underworld looked like a cross between
airport security and the Jersey Turnpike.
There were three separate entrances under one huge black archway that said:
YOU ARE NOW ENTERING EREBUS. Each entrance had a pass-through
metal detector mounted with security cameras. Beyond this were tollbooths
manned by black-robed ghouls like Charon.
The howling of the hungry animal was really loud now, but I couldn’t see
where it was coming from. The three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was supposed
to guard Hades’s door, was nowhere to be seen.
The dead queued up in the three lines, two marked: ATTENDANT ON DUTY,
and one marked: EZ DEATH. The EZ DEATH line was moving right along. The
other two were crawling.
‘What do you figure?’ I asked Annabeth.
‘The fast line must go straight to Asphodel,’ she said. ‘No contest. They don’t
want to risk judgment from the court, because it might go against them.’
‘There’s a court for dead people?’
‘Yeah. Three judges. They switch around who sits on the bench. King Minos,
Thomas Jefferson, Shakespeare – people like that. Sometimes they look at a life
and decide that person needs a special reward – the Fields of Elysium.
Sometimes they decide on punishment. But most people, well, they just lived.
Nothing special, good or bad. So they go to the Fields of Asphodel.’
‘And do what?’
Grover said, ‘Imagine standing in a wheat field in Kansas. Forever.’
‘Harsh,’ I said.
‘Not as harsh as that,’ Grover muttered. ‘Look.’
A couple of black-robed ghouls had pulled aside one spirit and were frisking
him at the security desk. The face of the dead man looked vaguely familiar.
‘He’s that preacher who made the news, remember?’ Grover asked.
‘Oh, yeah.’ I did remember now. We’d seen him on TV a couple of times at
the Yancy Academy dorm. He was this annoying televangelist from upstate New
York who’d raised millions of dollars for orphanages and then got caught
spending the money on stuff for his mansion, like gold-plated toilet seats, and an
indoor putt-putt golf course. He’d died in a police chase when his “Lamborghini
for the Lord” went off a cliff.
I said, ‘What’re they doing to him?’
‘Special punishment from Hades,’ Grover guessed. ‘The really bad people get
his personal attention as soon as they arrive. The Fu – the Kindly Ones will set
up an eternal torture for him.’
The thought of the Furies made me shudder. I realized I was in their home
territory now. Old Mrs Dodds would be licking her lips with anticipation.
‘But if he’s a preacher,’ I said, ‘and he believes in a different hell…’
Grover shrugged. ‘Who says he’s seeing this place the way were seeing it?
Humans see what they want to see. They’re very stubborn – er, persistent, that
way.’
We got closer to the gates. The howling was so loud now it shook the ground
at my feet, but I still couldn’t figure out where it was coming from.
Then, about fifteen metres in front of us, the green mist shimmered. Standing
just where the path split into three lanes was an enormous shadowy monster.
I hadn’t seen it before because it was half transparent, like the dead. Until it
moved, it blended with whatever was behind it. Only its eyes and teeth looked
solid. And it was staring straight at me.
My jaw hung open. All I could think to say was, ‘He’s a Rottweiler.’
I’d always imagined Cerberus as a big black mastiff. But he was obviously a
purebred Rottweiler, except of course that he was twice the size of a woolly
mammoth, mostly invisible, and had three heads.
The dead walked right up to him – no fear at all. The ATTENDANT ON
DUTY lines parted on either side of him. The EZ DEATH spirits walked right
between his front paws and under his belly, which they could do without even
crouching.
‘I’m starting to see him better,’ I muttered. ‘Why is that?’
‘I think…’ Annabeth moistened her lips. ‘I’m afraid it’s because we’re getting
closer to being dead.’
The dog’s middle head craned towards us. It sniffed the air and growled.
It can smell the living,’ I said.
‘But that’s okay,’ Grover said, trembling next to me. ‘Because we have a
plan.’
‘Right,’ Annabeth said. I’d never heard her voice sound quite so small. ‘A
plan.’
We moved towards the monster.
The middle head snarled at us, then barked so loud my eyeballs rattled.
‘Can you understand it?’ I asked Grover.
‘Oh yeah,’ he said. ‘I can understand it.’
‘What’s it saying?’
‘I don’t think humans have a four-letter word that translates, exactly.’
I took the big stick out of my backpack – a bed post I’d broken off Crusty’s
Safari Deluxe floor model. I held it up, and tried to channel happy dog thoughts
towards Cerberus – Alpo commercials, cute little puppies, fire hydrants. I tried
to smile like I wasn’t about to die.
‘Hey, Big Fella,’ I called up. ‘I bet they don’t play with you much.’
‘GROWWWLLLL!’
‘Good boy,’ I said weakly.
I waved the stick. The dog’s middle head followed the movement. The other
two heads trained their eyes on me, completely ignoring the spirits. I had
Cerberus’s undivided attention. I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
‘Fetch!’ I threw the stick into the gloom, a good solid throw. I heard it go
ker˜sploosh in the River Styx.
Cerberus glared at me, unimpressed. His eyes were baleful and cold.
So much for the plan.
Cerberus was now making a new kind of growl, deeper down in his three
throats.
‘Um,’ Grover said. ‘Percy?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I just thought you’d want to know.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Cerberus? He’s saying we’ve got ten seconds to pray to the god of our
choice. After that… well… he’s hungry.’
‘Wait!’ Annabeth said. She started rifling through her pack.
Uh-oh, I thought.
‘Five seconds,’ Grover said. ‘Do we run now?’
Annabeth produced a red rubber ball the size of a grapefruit. It was labelled:
WATERLAND, DENVER, CO. Before I could stop her, she raised the ball and
marched straight up to Cerberus.
She shouted, ‘See the ball? You want the ball, Cerberus? Sit!’
Cerberus looked as stunned as we were.
All three of his heads cocked sideways. Six nostrils dilated.
‘Sit!’ Annabeth called again.
I was sure that any moment she would become the worlds largest Milkbone
dog biscuit.
But instead, Cerberus licked his three sets of lips, shifted on his haunches, and
sat, immediately crushing a dozen spirits who’d been passing underneath him in
the EZ DEATH line. The spirits made muffled hisses as they dissipated, like the
air let out of tyres.
Annabeth said, ‘Good boy!’
She threw Cerberus the ball.
He caught it in his middle mouth. It was barely big enough for him to chew,
and the other heads started snapping at the middle, trying to get the new toy.
‘Drop it!’ Annabeth ordered.
Cerberus’s heads stopped fighting and looked at her. The ball was wedged
between two of his teeth like a tiny piece of gum. He made a loud, scary
whimper, then dropped the ball, now slimy and bitten nearly in half, at
Annabeth’s feet.
‘Good boy.’ She picked up the ball, ignoring the monster spit all over it.
She turned towards us. ‘Go now. EZ DEATH line – it’s faster.’
I said, ‘But –’
‘Now!’ She ordered, in the same tone she was using on the dog.
Grover and I inched forward warily.
Cerberus started to growl.
‘Stay!’ Annabeth ordered the monster. ‘If you want the ball, stay!’
Cerberus whimpered, but he stayed where he was.
‘What about you?’ I asked Annabeth as we passed her.
‘I know what I’m doing, Percy,’ she muttered. At least, I’m pretty sure…’
Grover and I walked between the monster’s legs.
Please, Annabeth, I prayed. Don’t tell him to sit again.
We made it through. Cerberus wasn’t any less scary-looking from the back.
Annabeth said, ‘Good dog!’
She held up the tattered red ball, and probably came to the same conclusion I
did – if she rewarded Cerberus, there’d be nothing left for another trick.
She threw the ball anyway. The monster’s left mouth immediately snatched it
up, only to be attacked by the middle head while the right head moaned in
protest.
While the monster was distracted, Annabeth walked briskly under its belly
and joined us at the metal detector.
‘How did you do that?’ I asked her, amazed.
‘Obedience school,’ she said breathlessly, and I was surprised to see there
were tears in her eyes. ‘When I was little, at my dad’s house, we had a
Dobermann…’
‘Never mind that,’ Grover said, tugging at my shirt. ‘Come on!’
We were about to bolt through the EZ DEATH line when Cerberus moaned
pitifully from all three mouths. Annabeth stopped.
She turned to face the dog, which had done a one-eighty to look at us.
Cerberus panted expectantly, the tiny red ball in pieces in a puddle of drool at
its feet.
‘Good boy,’ Annabeth said, but her voice sounded melancholy and uncertain.
The monster’s heads turned sideways, as if worried about her.
‘I’ll bring you another ball soon,’ Annabeth promised faintly. ‘Would you like
that?’
The monster whimpered. I didn’t need to speak dog to know Cerberus was
still waiting for the ball.
‘Good dog. I’ll come visit you soon. I – I promise.’ Annabeth turned to us.
‘Let’s go.’
Grover and I pushed through the metal detector, which immediately screamed
and set off flashing red lights. ‘Unauthorized possessions! Magic detected!’
Cerberus started to bark.
We burst through the EZ DEATH gate, which started even more alarms
blaring, and raced into the Underworld.
A few minutes later, we were hiding, out of breath, in the rotten trunk of an
immense black tree as security ghouls scuttled past, yelling for backup from the
Furies.
Grover murmured, ‘Well, Percy, what have we learned today?’
‘That three-headed dogs prefer red rubber balls over sticks?’
‘No,’ Grover told me. ‘We’ve learned that your plans really, really bite!’
I wasn’t sure about that. I thought maybe Annabeth and I had both had the
right idea. Even here in the Underworld, everybody – even monsters – needed a
little attention once in a while.
I thought about that as we waited for the ghouls to pass. I pretended not to see
Annabeth wipe a tear from her cheek as she listened to the mournful keening of
Cerberus in the distance, longing for his new friend.
19
We Find Out the Truth, Sort of
Imagine the largest concert crowd you’ve ever seen, a football field packed with
a million fans.
Now imagine a field a million times that big, packed with people, and imagine
the electricity has gone out, and there is no noise, no light, no beach ball
bouncing around over the crowd. Something tragic has happened backstage.
Whispering masses of people are just milling around in the shadows, waiting for
a concert that will never start.
If you can picture that, you have a pretty good idea what the Fields of
Asphodel looked like. The black grass had been trampled by aeons of dead feet.
A warm, moist wind blew like the breath of a swamp. Black trees – Grover told
me they were poplars – grew in clumps here and there.
The cavern ceiling was so high above us it might’ve been a bank of storm
clouds, except for the stalactites, which glowed faint grey and looked wickedly
pointed. I tried not to imagine they’d fall on us at any moment, but dotted around
the fields were several that had fallen and impaled themselves in the black grass.
I guess the dead didn’t have to worry about little hazards like being speared by
stalactites the size of booster rockets.
Annabeth, Grover and I tried to blend into the crowd, keeping an eye out for
security ghouls. I couldn’t help looking for familiar faces among the spirits of
Asphodel, but the dead are hard to look at. Their faces shimmer. They all look
slightly angry or confused. They will come up to you and speak, but their voices
sound like chatter, like bats twittering. Once they realize you can’t understand
them, they frown and move away.
The dead aren’t scary. They’re just sad.
We crept along, following the line of new arrivals that snaked from the main
gates towards a black-tented pavilion with a banner that read:
JUDGMENTS FOR ELYSIUM AND ETERNAL DAMNATION
Welcome, Newly Deceased!
Out the back of the tent came two much smaller lines.
To the left, spirits flanked by security ghouls were marched down a rocky path
towards the Fields of Punishment, which glowed and smoked in the distance, a
vast, cracked wasteland with rivers of lava and minefields and miles of barbed
wire separating the different torture areas. Even from far away, I could see
people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked
through cactus patches or listen to opera music. I could just make out a tiny hill,
with the ant-size figure of Sisyphus struggling to move his boulder to the top.
And I saw worse tortures, too – things I don’t want to describe.
The line coming from the right side of the judgment pavilion was much better.
This one led down towards a small valley surrounded by walls – a gated
community, which seemed to be the only happy part of the Underworld. Beyond
the security gate were neighbourhoods of beautiful houses from every time
period in history, Roman villas and mediaeval castles and Victorian mansions.
Silver and gold flowers bloomed on the lawns. The grass rippled in rainbow
colours. I could hear laughter and smell barbecue cooking.
Elysium.
In the middle of that valley was a glittering blue lake, with three small islands
like a vacation resort in the Bahamas. The Isles of the Blest, for people who had
chosen to be reborn three times, and three times achieved Elysium. Immediately
I knew that’s where I wanted to go when I died.
‘That’s what it’s all about,’ Annabeth said, like she was reading my thoughts.
‘That’s the place for heroes.’
But I thought of how few people there were in Elysium, how tiny it was
compared to Asphodel or even Punishment. So few people did good in their
lives. It was depressing.
We left the judgment pavilion and moved deeper into Asphodel. It got darker.
The colours faded from our clothes. The crowds of chattering spirits began to
thin.
After a few miles of walking, we began to hear a familiar screech in the
distance. Looming on the horizon was a palace of glittering black obsidian.
Above the parapets swirled three dark batlike creatures: the Furies. I got the
feeling they were waiting for us.
‘I suppose it’s too late to turn back,’ Grover said wistfully.
‘We’ll be okay.’ I tried to sound confident.
‘Maybe we should search some of the other places first,’ Grover suggested.
‘Like, Elysium, for instance…’
‘Come on, goat boy.’ Annabeth grabbed his arm.
Grover yelped. His trainers sprouted wings and his legs shot forward, pulling
him away from Annabeth. He landed flat on his back in the grass.
‘Grover,’ Annabeth chided. ‘Stop messing around.’
‘But I didn’t –’
He yelped again. His shoes were flapping like crazy now. They levitated off
the ground and started dragging him away from us.
‘Maia!’ he yelled, but the magic word seemed to have no effect. ‘Maia,
already! 911! Help!’
I got over being stunned and made a grab for Grover’s hand, but too late. He
was picking up speed, skidding downhill like a bobsled.
We ran after him.
Annabeth shouted, ‘Untie the shoes!’
It was a smart idea, but I guess it’s not so easy when your shoes are pulling
you along feet-first at full speed. Grover tried to sit up, but he couldn’t get close
to the laces.
We kept after him, trying to keep him in sight as he zipped between the legs of
spirits who chattered at him in annoyance.
I was sure Grover was going to barrel straight through the gates of Hades’s
palace, but his shoes veered sharply to the right and dragged him in the opposite
direction.
The slope got steeper. Grover picked up speed. Annabeth and I had to sprint to
keep up. The cavern walls narrowed on either side, and I realized we’d entered
some kind of side tunnel. No black grass or trees now, just rock underfoot, and
the dim light of the stalactites above.
‘Grover!’ I yelled, my voice echoing. ‘Hold on to something!’
‘What?’ he yelled back.
He was grabbing at gravel, but there was nothing big enough to slow him
down.
The tunnel got darker and colder. The hairs on my arms bristled. It smelled
evil down here. It made me think of things I shouldn’t even know about – blood
spilled on an ancient stone altar, the foul breath of a murderer.
Then I saw what was ahead of us, and I stopped dead in my tracks.
The tunnel widened into a huge dark cavern, and in the middle was a chasm
the size of a city block.
Grover was sliding straight towards the edge.
‘Come on, Percy!’ Annabeth yelled, tugging at my wrist.
‘But that’s –’
‘I know!’ she shouted. ‘The place you described in your dream! But Grover’s
going to fall if we don’t catch him.’ She was right, of course. Grover’s
predicament got me moving again.
He was yelling, clawing at the ground, but the winged shoes kept dragging
him towards the pit, and it didn’t look like we could possibly get to him in time.
What saved him were his hooves.
The flying sneakers had always been a loose fit on him, and finally Grover hit
a big rock and the left shoe came flying off. It sped into the darkness, down into
the chasm. The right shoe kept tugging him along, but not as fast. Grover was
able to slow himself down by grabbing on to the big rock and using it like an
anchor.
He was three metres from the edge of the pit when we caught him and hauled
him back up the slope. The other winged shoe tugged itself off, circled around us
angrily and kicked our heads in protest before flying off into the chasm to join its
twin.
We all collapsed, exhausted, on the obsidian gravel. My limbs felt like lead.
Even my backpack seemed heavier, as if somebody had filled it with rocks.
Grover was scratched up pretty bad. His hands were bleeding. His eyes had
gone slit-pupilled, goat style, the way they did whenever he was terrified.
‘I don’t know how…’ he panted. ‘I didn’t…’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Listen.’
I heard something – a deep whisper in the darkness.
Another few seconds, and Annabeth said, ‘Percy, this place –’
‘Shh.’ I stood.
The sound was getting louder, a muttering, evil voice from far, far below us.
Coming from the pit.
Grover sat up. ‘Wh – what’s that noise?’
Annabeth heard it too, now. I could see it in her eyes. ‘Tartarus. The entrance
to Tartarus.’
I uncapped Anaklusmos.
The bronze sword expanded, gleaming in the darkness, and the evil voice
seemed to falter, just for a moment, before resuming its chant.
I could almost make out words now, ancient, ancient words, older even than
Greek. As if…
‘Magic,’ I said.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Annabeth said.
Together, we dragged Grover to his hooves and started back up the tunnel. My
legs wouldn’t move fast enough. My backpack weighed me down. The voice got
louder and angrier behind us, and we broke into a run.
Not a moment too soon.
A cold blast of wind pulled at our backs, as if the entire pit were inhaling. For
a terrifying moment, I lost ground, my feet slipping in the gravel. If we’d been
any closer to the edge, we would’ve been sucked in.
We kept struggling forward, and finally reached the top of the tunnel, where
the cavern widened out into the Fields of Asphodel. The wind died. A wail of
outrage echoed from deep in the tunnel. Something was not happy we’d got
away.
‘What was that?’ Grover panted, when we’d collapsed in the relative safety of
a black poplar grove. ‘One of Hades’s pets?’
Annabeth and I looked at each other. I could tell she was nursing an idea,
probably the same one she’d got during the taxi ride to L.A., but she was too
scared to share it. That was enough to terrify me.
I capped my sword, put the pen back in my pocket. ‘Let’s keep going.’ I
looked at Grover. ‘Can you walk?’
He swallowed. ‘Yeah, sure. I never liked those shoes, anyway.’
He tried to sound brave about it, but he was trembling as badly as Annabeth
and I were. Whatever was in that pit was nobody’s pet. It was unspeakably old
and powerful. Even Echidna hadn’t given me that feeling. I was almost relieved
to turn my back on that tunnel and head towards the palace of Hades.
Almost.
The Furies circled the parapets, high in the gloom. The outer walls of the fortress
glittered black, and the two-storey-tall bronze gates stood wide open.
Up close, I saw that the engravings on the gates were scenes of death. Some
were from modern times – an atomic bomb exploding over a city, a trench filled
with gas mask-wearing soldiers, a line of African famine victims waiting with
empty bowls – but all of them looked as if they’d been etched into the bronze
thousands of years ago. I wondered if I was looking at prophecies that had come
true.
Inside the courtyard was the strangest garden I’d ever seen. Multicoloured
mushrooms, poisonous shrubs and weird luminous plants grew without sunlight.
Precious jewels made up for the lack of flowers, piles of rubies as big as my fist,
clumps of raw diamonds. Standing here and there like frozen party guests were
Medusa’s garden statues, petrified children, satyrs and centaurs, all smiling
grotesquely.
In the centre of the garden was an orchard of pomegranate trees, their orange
blooms neon bright in the dark. ‘The garden of Persephone,’ Annabeth said.
‘Keep walking.’
I understood why she wanted to move on. The tart smell of those
pomegranates was almost overwhelming. I had a sudden desire to eat them, but
then I remembered the story of Persephone. One bite of Underworld food, and
we would never be able to leave. I pulled Grover away to keep him from picking
a big juicy one.
We walked up the steps of the palace, between black columns, through a black
marble portico and into the house of Hades. The entry hall had a polished bronze
floor, which seemed to boil in the reflected torchlight. There was no ceiling, just
the cavern roof, far above. I guess they never had to worry about rain down here.
Every side doorway was guarded by a skeleton in military gear. Some wore
Greek armour, some British redcoat uniforms, some camouflage with tattered
American flags on the shoulders. They carried spears or muskets or M-16s. None
of them bothered us, but their hollow eye sockets followed us as we walked
down the hall, towards the big set of doors at the opposite end.
Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests.
‘You know,’ Grover mumbled, ‘I bet Hades doesn’t have trouble with door-todoor salesmen.’
My backpack weighed a ton now. I couldn’t figure out why. I wanted to open
it, check to see if I had some-how picked up a stray bowling ball, but this wasn’t
the time.
‘Well, guys,’ I said. ‘I suppose we should… knock?’
A hot wind blew down the corridor, and the doors swung open. The guards
stepped aside.
‘I guess that means “entrez,”,’ Annabeth said.
The room inside looked just like in my dream, except this time the throne of
Hades was occupied.
He was the third god I’d met, but the first who really struck me as godlike.
He was at least three metres tall, for one thing, and dressed in black silk robes
and a crown of braided gold. His skin was albino white, his hair shoulder-length
and jet black. He wasn’t bulked up like Ares, but he radiated power. He lounged
on his throne of fused human bones, looking lithe, graceful and dangerous as a
panther.
I immediately felt like he should be giving the orders. He knew more than I
did. He should be my master. Then I told myself to snap out of it.
Hades’s aura was affecting me, just as Ares’s had. The Lord of the Dead
resembled pictures I’d seen of Adolph Hitler, or Napoleon, or the terrorist
leaders who direct suicide bombers. Hades had the same intense eyes, the same
kind of mesmerizing, evil charisma.
‘You are brave to come here, Son of Poseidon,’ he said in an oily voice. ‘After
what you have done to me, very brave indeed. Or perhaps you are simply very
foolish.’
Numbness crept into my joints, tempting me to lie down and just take a little
nap at Hades’s feet. Curl up here and sleep forever.
I fought the feeling and stepped forward. I knew what I had to say. ‘Lord and
Uncle, I come with two requests.’
Hades raised an eyebrow. When he sat forward in his throne, shadowy faces
appeared in the folds of his black robes, faces of torment, as if the garment were
stitched of trapped souls from the Fields of Punishment, trying to get out. The
ADHD part of me wondered, off-task, whether the rest of his clothes were made
the same way. What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get
woven into Hades’s underwear?
‘Only two requests?’ Hades said. ‘Arrogant child. As if you have not already
taken enough. Speak, then. It amuses me not to strike you dead yet.’
I swallowed. This was going about as well as I’d feared.
I glanced at the empty, smaller throne next to Hades’s. It was shaped like a
black flower, gilded with gold. I wished Queen Persephone were here. I recalled
something in the myths about how she could calm her husband’s moods. But it
was summer. Of course, Persephone would be above in the world of light with
her mother, the goddess of agriculture Demeter. Her visits, not the tilt of the
earth, created the seasons.
Annabeth cleared her throat. Her finger prodded me in the back.
‘Lord Hades,’ I said. ‘Look, sir, there can’t be a war among the gods. It would
be… bad.’
‘Really bad,’ Grover added helpfully.
‘Return Zeus’s master bolt to me,’ I said. ‘Please, sir. Let me carry it to
Olympus.’
Hades’s eyes grew dangerously bright. ‘You dare keep up this pretence, after
what you have done?’
I glanced back at my friends. They looked as confused as I was.
‘Um… Uncle,’ I said. ‘You keep saying “after what I’ve done”. What exactly
have I done?’
The throne room shook with a tremor so strong they probably felt it upstairs in
Los Angeles. Debris fell from the cavern ceiling. Doors burst open all along the
walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time
period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter of the room,
blocking the exits.
Hades bellowed, ‘Do you think I want war, godling?’
I wanted to say, Well, these guys don’t look like peace activists. But I thought
that might be a dangerous answer.
‘You are the Lord of the Dead,’ I said carefully. ‘A war would expand your
kingdom, right?’
‘A typical thing for my brothers to say! Do you think I need more subjects?
Did you not see the sprawl of Asphodel?’
‘Well…’
‘Have you any idea how much my kingdom has swollen in this past century
alone, how many subdivisions I’ve had to open?’
I opened my mouth to respond, but Hades was on a roll now.
‘More security ghouls,’ he moaned. ‘Traffic problems at the judgment
pavilion. Double overtime for the staff. I used to be a rich god, Percy Jackson. I
control all the precious metals under the earth. But my expenses!’
‘Charon wants a pay raise,’ I blurted, just remembering the fact. As soon as I
said it, I wished I could sew up my mouth.
‘Don’t get me started on Charon!’ Hades yelled. ‘He’s been impossible ever
since he discovered Italian suits! Problems everywhere, and I’ve got to handle
all of them personally. The commute time alone from the palace to the gates is
enough to drive me insane! And the dead just keep arriving. No, godling. I need
no help getting subjects! I did not ask for this war.’
‘But you took Zeus’s master bolt.’
‘Lies!’ More rumbling. Hades rose from his throne, towering to the height of a
football goalpost. ‘Your father may fool Zeus, boy, but I am not so stupid. I see
his plan.’
‘His plan?’
‘You were the thief on the winter solstice,’ he said. ‘Your father thought to
keep you his little secret. He directed you into the throne room on Olympus. You
took the master bolt and my helmet. Had I not sent my Fury to discover you at
Yancy Academy, Poseidon might have succeeded in hiding his scheme to start a
war. But now you have been forced into the open. You will be exposed as
Poseidon’s thief, and I will have my helmet back!’
‘But…’ Annabeth spoke. I could tell her mind was going a million miles an
hour. ‘Lord Hades, your helmet of darkness is missing, too?’
‘Do not play innocent with me, girl. You and the satyr have been helping this
hero – coming here to threaten me in Poseidon’s name, no doubt – to bring me
an ultimatum. Does Poseidon think I can be blackmailed into supporting him?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘Poseidon didn’t – I didn’t –’
‘I have said nothing of the helmet’s disappearance,’ Hades snarled, ‘because I
had no illusions that anyone on Olympus would offer me the slightest justice, the
slightest help. I can ill afford for word to get out that my most powerful weapon
of fear is missing. So I searched for you myself, and when it was clear you were
coming to me to deliver your threat, I did not try to stop you.’
‘You didn’t try to stop us? But –’
‘Return my helmet now, or I will stop death,’ Hades threatened. ‘That is my
counter-proposal. I will open the earth and have the dead pour back into the
world. I will make your lands a nightmare. And you, Percy Jackson – your
skeleton will lead my army out of Hades.’
The skeletal soldiers all took one step forward, making their weapons ready.
At that point, I probably should have been terrified. The strange thing was, I
felt offended. Nothing gets me angrier than being accused of something I didn’t
do. I’ve had a lot of experience with that.
‘You’re as bad as Zeus,’ I said. ‘You think I stole from you? That’s why you
sent the Furies after me?’
‘Of course,’ Hades said.
‘And the other monsters?’
Hades curled his lip. ‘I had nothing to do with them. I wanted no quick death
for you – I wanted you brought before me alive so you might face every torture
in the Fields of Punishment. Why do you think I let you enter my kingdom so
easily?’
‘Easily?’
‘Return my property!’
‘But I don’t have your helmet. I came for the master bolt.’
‘Which you already possess!’ Hades shouted. ‘You came here with it. little
fool, thinking you could you threaten me!’
‘But I didn’t!’
‘Open your pack, then.’
A horrible feeling struck me. The weight in my backpack, like a bowling ball.
It couldn’t be…
I slung it off my shoulder and unzipped it. Inside was a sixty-centimetre-long
metal cylinder, spiked on both ends, humming with energy.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said. ‘How –’
‘I – I don’t know. I don’t understand.’
‘You heroes are always the same,’ Hades said. ‘Your pride makes you foolish,
thinking you could bring such a weapon before me. I did not ask for Zeus’s
master bolt, but since it is here, you will yield it to me. I am sure it will make an
excellent bargaining tool. And now… my helmet. Where is it?’
I was speechless. I had no helmet. I had no idea how the master bolt had got
into my backpack. I wanted to think Hades was pulling some kind of trick.
Hades was the bad guy. But suddenly the world turned sideways. I realized I’d
been played with. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades had been set at each other’s throats
by someone else. The master bolt had been in the backpack, and I’d got the
backpack from…
‘Lord Hades, wait,’ I said. ‘This is all a mistake.’
‘A mistake?’ Hades roared.
The skeletons aimed their weapons. From high above, there was a fluttering of
leathery wings, and the three Furies swooped down to perch on the back of their
master’s throne. The one with Mrs Dodds’s face grinned at me eagerly and
flicked her whip.
‘There is no mistake,’ Hades said. ‘I know why you have come – I know the
real reason you brought the bolt. You came to bargain for her.’
Hades loosed a ball of gold fire from his palm. It exploded on the steps in
front of me, and there was my mother, frozen in a shower of gold, just as she was
at the moment when the Minotaur began to squeeze her to death.
I couldn’t speak. I reached out to touch her, but the light was as hot as a
bonfire.
‘Yes,’ Hades said with satisfaction. ‘I took her. I knew, Percy Jackson, that
you would come to bargain with me eventually. Return my helmet, and perhaps I
will let her go. She is not dead, you know. Not yet. But if you displease me, that
will change.’
I thought about the pearls in my pocket. Maybe they could get me out of this.
If I could just get my mom free…
‘Ah, the pearls,’ Hades said, and my blood froze. ‘Yes, my brother and his
little tricks. Bring them forth, Percy Jackson.’
My hand moved against my will and brought out the pearls.
‘Only three,’ Hades said. ‘What a shame. You do realize each only protects a
single person. Try to take your mother, then, little godling. And which of your
friends will you leave behind to spend eternity with me? Go on. Choose. Or give
me the backpack and accept my terms.’
I looked at Annabeth and Grover. Their faces were grim.
‘We were tricked,’ I told them. ‘Set up.’
‘Yes, but why?’ Annabeth asked. ‘And the voice in the pit –’
‘I don’t know yet,’ I said. ‘But I intend to ask.’
‘Decide, boy!’ Hades yelled.
‘Percy.’ Grover put his hand on my shoulder. ‘You can’t give him the bolt.’
‘I know that.’
‘Leave me here,’ he said. ‘Use the third pearl on your mom.’
‘No!’
‘I’m a satyr,’ Grover said. ‘We don’t have souls like humans do. He can
torture me until I die, but he won’t get me forever. I’ll just be reincarnated as a
flower or something. It’s the best way.’
‘No.’ Annabeth drew her bronze knife. ‘You two go on. Grover, you have to
protect Percy. You have to get your searcher’s licence and start your quest for
Pan. Get his mom out of here. I’ll cover you. I plan to go down fighting.’
‘No way,’ Grover said. ‘I’m staying behind.’
‘Think again, goat boy,’ Annabeth said.
‘Stop it, both of you!’ I felt like my heart was being ripped in two. They had
both been with me through so much. I remembered Grover dive-bombing
Medusa in the statue garden, and Annabeth saving us from Cerberus; we’d
survived Hephaestus’s Waterland ride, the St Louis Arch, the Lotus Casino. I had
spent thousands of miles worried that I’d be betrayed by a friend, but these
friends would never do that. They had done nothing but save me, over and over,
and now they wanted to sacrifice their lives for my mom.
‘I know what to do,’ I said. ‘Take these.’
I handed them each a pearl.
Annabeth said, ‘But, Percy…’
I turned and faced my mother. I desperately wanted to sacrifice myself and use
the last pearl on her, but I knew what she would say. She would never allow it. I
had to get the bolt back to Olympus and tell Zeus the truth. I had to stop the war.
She would never forgive me if I saved her instead. I thought about the prophecy
made at Half-Blood Hill what seemed like a million years ago. You will fail to
save what matters most in the end.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told her. ‘I’ll be back. I’ll find a way.’
The smug look on Hades’s face faded. He said, ‘Godling…?’
‘I’ll find your helmet, Uncle,’ I told him. ‘I’ll return it. Remember about
Charon’s pay raise.’
‘Do not defy me –’
‘And it wouldn’t hurt to play with Cerberus once in a while. He likes red
rubber balls.’
‘Percy Jackson, you will not –’
I shouted, ‘Now, guys!’
We smashed the pearls at our feet. For a scary moment, nothing happened.
Hades yelled, ‘Destroy them!’
The army of skeletons rushed forward, swords out, guns clicking to full
automatic. The Furies lunged, their whips bursting into flame.
Just as the skeletons opened fire, the pearl exploded at my feet with a burst of
green light and a gust of fresh sea wind. I was encased in a milky white sphere,
which was starting to float off the ground.
Annabeth and Grover were right behind me. Spears and bullets sparked
harmlessly off the pearl bubbles as we floated up. Hades yelled with such rage,
the entire fortress shook and I knew it was not going to be a peaceful night in
L.A.
‘Look up!’ Grover yelled. ‘We’re going to crash!’
Sure enough, we were racing right towards the stalactites, which I figured
would pop our bubbles and skewer us.
‘How do you control these things?’ Annabeth shouted.
‘I don’t think you do!’ I shouted back.
We screamed as the bubbles slammed into the ceiling and… Darkness.
Were we dead?
No, I could still feel the racing sensation. We were going up, right through
solid rock as easily as an air bubble in water. That was the power of the pearls, I
realized – What belongs to the sea will always return to the sea.
For a few moments, I couldn’t see anything outside the smooth walls of my
sphere, then my pearl broke through on the ocean floor. The two other milky
spheres, Annabeth and Grover, kept pace with me as we soared upward through
the water. And ker-blam!
We exploded on the surface, in the middle of Los Angeles Bay, knocking a
surfer off his board with an indignant, ‘Dude!’
I grabbed Grover and hauled him over to a lifebuoy. I caught Annabeth and
dragged her over too. A curious shark was circling us, a great white about three
metres long.
I said, ‘Beat it.’
The shark turned and raced away.
The surfer screamed something about bad mushrooms and paddled away from
us as fast as he could.
Somehow, I knew what time it was: early morning, June 21, the day of the
summer solstice.
In the distance, Los Angeles was on fire, plumes of smoke rising from
neighbourhoods all over the city. There had been an earthquake, all right, and it
was Hades’s fault. He was probably sending an army of the dead after me right
now.
But at the moment, the Underworld wasn’t my biggest problem.
I had to get to shore. I had to get Zeus’s thunderbolt back to Olympus. Most of
all, I had to have a serious conversation with the god who’d tricked me.
20
I Battle My Jerk Relative
A Coast Guard boat picked us up, but they were too busy to keep us for long, or
to wonder how three kids in street clothes had got out into the middle of the bay.
There was a disaster to mop up. Their radios were jammed with distress calls.
They dropped us off at the Santa Monica pier with towels around our
shoulders and water bottles that said I’M A JUNIOR COAST GUARD! and sped
off to save more people.
Our clothes were sopping wet, even mine. When the Coast Guard boat had
appeared, I’d silently prayed they wouldn’t pick me out of the water and find me
perfectly dry, which might’ve raised some eyebrows. So I’d willed myself to get
soaked. Sure enough, my usual waterproof magic had abandoned me. I was also
barefoot, because I’d given my shoes to Grover. Better the Coast Guard wonder
why one of us was barefoot than wonder why one of us had hooves.
After reaching dry land, we stumbled down the beach, watching the city burn
against a beautiful sunrise. I felt as if I’d just come back from the dead – which I
had. My backpack was heavy with Zeus’s master bolt. My heart was even
heavier from seeing my mother.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Annabeth said. ‘We went all that way –’
‘It was a trick,’ I said. A strategy worthy of Athena.’
‘Hey,’ she warned.
‘You get it, don’t you?’
She dropped her eyes, her anger fading. ‘Yeah. I get it.’
‘Well, I don’t!’ Grover complained. ‘Would somebody –’
‘Percy…’ Annabeth said. ‘I’m sorry about your mother. I’m so sorry….’
I pretended not to hear her. If I talked about my mother, I was going to start
crying like a little kid.
‘The prophecy was right,’ I said. ‘“You shall go west and face the god who
has turned.’ But it wasn’t Hades. Hades didn’t want war between the Big Three.
Someone else pulled off the theft. Someone stole Zeus’s master bolt, and
Hades’s helmet, and framed me because I’m Poseidon’s kid. Poseidon will get
blamed by both sides. By sundown today, there will be a three-way war. And I’ll
have caused it.’
Grover shook his head, mystified. ‘But who would be that sneaky? Who
would want war that bad?’
I stopped in my tracks, looking down the beach. ‘Gee, let me think.’
There he was, waiting for us, in his black leather duster and his sunglasses, an
aluminum baseball bat propped on his shoulder. His motorcycle rumbled beside
him, its headlight turning the sand red.
‘Hey, kid,’ Ares said, seeming genuinely pleased to see me. ‘You were
supposed to die.’
‘You tricked me,’ I said. ‘You stole the helmet and the master bolt.’
Ares grinned. ‘Well, now, I didn’t steal them personally. Gods taking each
other’s symbols of power – that’s a big no-no. But you’re not the only hero in the
world who can run errands.’
‘Who did you use? Clarisse? She was there at the winter solstice.’
The idea seemed to amuse him. ‘Doesn’t matter. The point is, kid, you’re
impeding the war effort. See, you’ve got to die in the Underworld. Then Old
Seaweed will be mad at Hades for killing you. Corpse Breath will have Zeus’s
master bolt, so Zeus’ll be mad at him. And Hades is still looking for this…’
From his pocket he took out a ski cap – the kind bank robbers wear – and
placed it between the handlebars of his bike. Immediately, the cap transformed
into an elaborate bronze war helmet.
‘The helmet of darkness,’ Grover gasped.
‘Exactly,’ Ares said. ‘Now where was I? Oh yeah, Hades will be mad at both
Zeus and Poseidon, because he doesn’t know who took this. Pretty soon, we got
a nice little three-way slugfest going.’
‘But they’re your family!’ Annabeth protested.
Ares shrugged. ‘Best kind of war. Always the bloodiest. Nothing like
watching your relatives fight, I always say.’
‘You gave me the backpack in Denver,’ I said. ‘The master bolt was in there
the whole time.’
‘Yes and no,’ Ares said. ‘It’s probably too complicated for your little mortal
brain to follow, but the backpack is the master bolt’s sheath, just morphed a bit.
The bolt is connected to it, sort of like that sword you got, kid. It always returns
to your pocket, right?’
I wasn’t sure how Ares knew about that, but I guess a god of war had to make
it his business to know about weapons.
‘Anyway,’ Ares continued, ‘I tinkered with the magic a bit, so the bolt would
only return to the sheath once you reached the Underworld. You get close to
Hades… Bingo, you got mail. If you died along the way – no loss. I still had the
weapon.’
‘But why not just keep the master bolt for yourself?’ I said. ‘Why send it to
Hades?’
Ares got a twitch in his jaw. For a moment, it was almost as if he were
listening to another voice, deep inside his head. ‘Why didn’t I… yeah… with
that kind of fire-power…’
He held the trance for one second… two seconds…
I exchanged nervous looks with Annabeth.
Ares’s face cleared. ‘I didn’t want the trouble. Better to have you caught
redhanded, holding the thing.’
‘You’re lying,’ I said. ‘Sending the bolt to the Underworld wasn’t your idea,
was it?’
‘Of course it was!’ Smoke drifted up from his sunglasses, as if they were
about to catch fire.
‘You didn’t order the theft,’ I guessed. ‘Someone else sent a hero to steal the
two items. Then, when Zeus sent you to hunt him down, you caught the thief.
But you didn’t turn him over to Zeus. Something convinced you to let him go.
You kept the items until another hero could come along and complete the
delivery. That thing in the pit is ordering you around.’
‘I am the god of war! I take orders from no one! I don’t have dreams!’
I hesitated. ‘Who said anything about dreams?’
Ares looked agitated, but he tried to cover it with a smirk.
‘Let’s get back to the problem at hand, kid. You’re alive. I can’t have you
taking that bolt to Olympus. You just might get those hardheaded idiots to listen
to you. So I’ve got to kill you. Nothing personal.’
He snapped his fingers. The sand exploded at his feet and out charged a wild
boar, even larger and uglier than the one whose head hung above the door of
cabin seven at Camp Half-Blood. The beast pawed the sand, glaring at me with
beady eyes as it lowered its razor-sharp tusks and waited for the command to
kill.
I stepped into the surf. ‘Fight me yourself, Ares.’
He laughed, but I heard a little edge to his laughter… an uneasiness. ‘You’ve
only got one talent, kid, running away. You ran from the Chimera. You ran from
the Underworld. You don’t have what it takes.’
‘Scared?’
‘In your adolescent dreams.’ But his sunglasses were starting to melt from the
heat of his eyes. ‘No direct involvement. Sorry, kid. You’re not at my level.’
Annabeth said, ‘Percy, run!’
The giant boar charged.
But I was done running from monsters. Or Hades, or Ares, or anybody.
As the boar rushed me, I uncapped my pen and sidestepped. Riptide appeared
in my hands. I slashed upward. The boar’s severed right tusk fell at my feet,
while the disoriented animal charged into the sea.
I shouted, ‘Wave!’
Immediately, a wave surged up from nowhere and engulfed the boar, wrapping
around it like a blanket. The beast squealed once in terror. Then it was gone,
swallowed by the sea.
I turned back to Ares. ‘Are you going to fight me now?’ I asked. ‘Or are you
going to hide behind another pet pig?’
Ares’s face was purple with rage. ‘Watch it, kid. I could turn you into –’
‘A cockroach,’ I said. ‘Or a tapeworm. Yeah, I’m sure. That’d save you from
getting your godly hide whipped, wouldn’t it?’
Flames danced along the top of his glasses. ‘Oh, man, you are really asking to
be smashed into a grease spot.’
‘If I lose, turn me into anything you want. Take the bolt. If I win, the helmet
and the bolt are mine and you have to go away.’
Ares sneered.
He swung the baseball bat off his shoulder. ‘How would you like to get
smashed: classic or modern?’
I showed him my sword.
‘That’s cool, dead boy,’ he said. ‘Classic it is.’ The baseball bat changed into a
huge, two-handed sword. The hilt was a large silver skull with a ruby in its
mouth.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said. ‘Don’t do this. He’s a god.’
‘He’s a coward,’ I told her.
She swallowed. ‘Wear this, at least. For luck.’
She took off her necklace, with her five years’ worth of camp beads and the
ring from her father, and tied it around my neck.
‘Reconciliation,’ she said. ‘Athena and Poseidon together.’
My face felt a little warm, but I managed a smile. ‘Thanks.’
‘And take this,’ Grover said. He handed me a flattened tin can that he’d
probably been saving in his pocket for a thousand miles. ‘The satyrs stand
behind you.’
‘Grover… I don’t know what to say.’
He patted me on the shoulder. I stuffed the tin can in my back pocket.
‘You all done saying goodbye?’ Ares came towards me, his black leather
duster trailing behind him, his sword glinting like fire in the sunrise. ‘I’ve been
fighting for eternity, kid. My strength is unlimited and I cannot die. What have
you got?’
A smaller ego, I thought, but I said nothing. I kept my feet in the surf, backing
into the water up to my ankles. I thought back to what Annabeth had said at the
Denver diner, so long ago: Ares has strength. That’s all he has. Even strength has
to how to wisdom sometimes.
He cleaved downward at my head, but I wasn’t there.
My body thought for me. The water seemed to push me into the air and I
catapulted over him, slashing as I came down. But Ares was just as quick. He
twisted, and the strike that should’ve caught him directly in the spine was
deflected off the end of his sword hilt.
He grinned. ‘Not bad, not bad.’
He slashed again and I was forced to jump onto dry land. I tried to sidestep, to
get back to the water, but Ares seemed to know what I wanted. He
outmanoeuvred me, pressing so hard I had to put all my concentration on not
getting sliced into pieces. I kept backing away from the surf. I couldn’t find any
openings to attack. His sword had a reach a metre longer than Anaklusmos.
Get in close, Luke had told me once, back in our sword class. When you’ve
got the shorter blade, get in close.
I stepped inside with a thrust, but Ares was waiting for that. He knocked my
blade out of my hands and kicked me in the chest. I went airborne – fifteen,
maybe twenty metres. I would’ve broken my back if I hadn’t crashed into the
soft sand of a dune.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth yelled. ‘Cops!’
I was seeing double. My chest felt like it had just been hit with a battering
ram, but I managed to get to my feet.
I couldn’t look away from Ares for fear he’d slice me in half, but out of the
corner of my eye I saw red lights flashing on the shoreline boulevard. Car doors
were slamming.
‘There, officer!’ somebody yelled. ‘See?’
A gruff cop voice: ‘Looks like that kid on TV… what the heck…’
‘That guy’s armed,’ another cop said. ‘Call for backup.’
I rolled to one side as Ares’s blade slashed the sand.
I ran for my sword, scooped it up, and launched a swipe at Ares’s face, only to
find my blade deflected again.
Ares seemed to know exactly what I was going to do the moment before I did
it.
I stepped back towards the surf, forcing him to follow.
‘Admit it, kid,’ Ares said. ‘You got no hope. I’m just toying with you.’
My senses were working overtime. I now understood what Annabeth had said
about ADHD keeping you alive in battle. I was wide awake, noticing every little
detail.
I could see where Ares was tensing. I could tell which way he would strike. At
the same time, I was aware of Annabeth and Grover, ten metres to my left. I saw
a second cop car pulling up, siren wailing. Spectators, people who had been
wandering the streets because of the earthquake, were starting to gather. Among
the crowd, I thought I saw a few who were walking with the strange, trotting gait
of disguised satyrs. There were shimmering forms of spirits, too, as if the dead
had risen from Hades to watch the battle. I heard the flap of leathery wings
circling somewhere above.
More sirens.
I stepped further into the water, but Ares was fast. The tip of his blade ripped
my sleeve and grazed my forearm.
A police voice on a megaphone said, ‘Drop the guns! Set them on the ground.
Now!’
Guns?
I looked at Ares’s weapon, and it seemed to be flickering; sometimes it looked
like a shotgun, sometimes a two-handed sword. I didn’t know what the humans
were seeing in my hands, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t make them like me.
Ares turned to glare at our spectators, which gave me a moment to breathe.
There were five police cars now, and a line of officers crouching behind them,
pistols trained on us.
‘This is a private matter!’ Ares bellowed. ‘Be gone!’
He swept his hand, and a wall of red flame rolled across the patrol cars. The
police barely had time to dive for cover before their vehicles exploded. The
crowd behind them scattered, screaming.
Ares roared with laughter. ‘Now, little hero. Let’s add you to the barbecue.’
He slashed. I deflected his blade. I got close enough to strike, tried to fake him
out with a feint, but my blow was knocked aside. The waves were hitting me in
the back now. Ares was up to his thighs, wading in after me.
I felt the rhythm of the sea, the waves growing larger as the tide rolled in, and
suddenly I had an idea. Little waves, I thought. And the water behind me seemed
to recede. I was holding back the tide by force of will, but tension was building,
like carbonation behind a cork.
Ares came towards me, grinning confidently. I lowered my blade, as if I were
too exhausted to go on. Wait for it, I told the sea. The pressure now was almost
lifting me off my feet. Ares raised his sword. I released the tide and jumped,
rocketing straight over Ares on a wave.
A two-metre wall of water smashed him full in the face, leaving him cursing
and sputtering with a mouth full of seaweed. I landed behind him with a splash
and feinted towards his head, as I’d done before. He turned in time to raise his
sword, but this time he was disoriented, he didn’t anticipate the trick. I changed
direction, lunged to the side and stabbed Riptide straight down into the water,
sending the point through the god’s heel.
The roar that followed made Hades’s earthquake look like a minor event. The
very sea was blasted back from Ares, leaving a wet circle of sand fifteen metres
wide.
Ichor, the golden blood of the gods, flowed from a gash in the war god’s boot.
The expression on his face was beyond hatred. It was pain, shock, complete
disbelief that he’d been wounded.
He limped towards me, muttering ancient Greek curses.
Something stopped him.
It was as if a cloud covered the sun, but worse. Light faded. Sound and colour
drained away. A cold, heavy presence passed over the beach, slowing time,
dropping the temperature to freezing and making me feel like life was hopeless,
fighting was useless.
The darkness lifted.
Ares looked stunned.
Police cars were burning behind us. The crowd of spectators had fled.
Annabeth and Grover stood on the beach, in shock, watching the water flood
back around Ares’s feet, his glowing golden ichor dissipating in the tide.
Ares lowered his sword.
‘You have made an enemy, godling,’ he told me. ‘You have sealed your fate.
Every time you raise your blade in battle, every time you hope for success, you
will feel my curse. Beware, Perseus Jackson. Beware.’
His body began to glow.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth shouted. ‘Don’t watch!’
I turned away as the god Ares revealed his true immortal form. I somehow
knew that if I looked, I would disintegrate into ashes.
The light died.
I looked back. Ares was gone. The tide rolled out to reveal Hades’s bronze
helmet of darkness. I picked it up and walked towards my friends.
But before I got there, I heard the flapping of leathery wings. Three evillooking grandmothers with lace hats and fiery whips drifted down from the sky
and landed in front of me.
The middle Fury, the one who had been Mrs Dodds, stepped forward. Her
fangs were bared, but for once she didn’t look threatening. She looked more
disappointed, as if she’d been planning to have me for supper, but had decided I
might give her indigestion.
‘We saw the whole thing,’ she hissed. ‘So… it truly was not you?’
I tossed her the helmet, which she caught in surprise.
‘Return that to Lord Hades,’ I said. ‘Tell him the truth. Tell him to call off the
war.’
She hesitated, then ran a forked tongue over her green, leathery lips. ‘Live
well, Percy Jackson. Become a true hero. Because if you do not, if you ever
come into my clutches again…’
She cackled, savouring the idea. Then she and her sisters rose on their bat’s
wings, fluttered into the smoke-filled sky and disappeared.
I joined Grover and Annabeth, who were staring at me in amazement.
‘Percy…’ Grover said. ‘That was so incredibly…’
‘Terrifying,’ said Annabeth.
‘Cool!’ Grover corrected.
I didn’t feel terrified. I certainly didn’t feel cool. I was tired and sore and
completely drained of energy.
‘Did you guys feel that… whatever it was?’ I asked.
They both nodded uneasily.
‘Must’ve been the Furies overhead,’ Grover said.
But I wasn’t so sure. Something had stopped Ares from killing me, and
whatever could do that was a lot stronger than the Furies.
I looked at Annabeth, and an understanding passed between us. I knew now
what was in that pit, what had spoken from the entrance of Tartarus.
I reclaimed my backpack from Grover and looked inside. The master bolt was
still there. Such a small thing to almost cause World War III.
‘We have to get back to New York,’ I said. ‘By tonight.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Annabeth said, ‘unless we –’
‘Fly,’ I agreed.
She stared at me. ‘Fly, like, in an aeroplane, which you were warned never to
do lest Zeus strike you out of the sky, and carrying a weapon that has more
destructive power than a nuclear bomb?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Pretty much exactly like that. Come on.’
21
I Settle My Tab
It’s funny how humans can wrap their mind around things and fit them into their
version of reality. Chiron had told me that long ago. As usual, I didn’t appreciate
his wisdom until much later.
According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had
been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He
accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake.
This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me
and two other adolescents in New York and brought us across country on a tenday odyssey of terror.
Poor little Percy Jackson wasn’t an international criminal, after all. He’d
caused a commotion on that Greyhound bus in New Jersey trying to get away
from his captor (and afterwards, witnesses would even swear they had seen the
leather-clad man on the bus – ‘Why didn’t I remember him before?’) The crazy
man had caused the explosion in the St Louis Arch. After all, no kid could’ve
done that. A concerned waitress in Denver had seen the man threatening his
abductees outside her diner, gotten a friend to take a photo and notified the
police. Finally, brave Percy Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen
a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the
beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five
police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had
occurred. Percy Jackson and his two friends were safely in police custody.
The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and
exhausted (which wasn’t hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras.
‘All I want,’ I said, choking back my tears, ‘is to see my loving stepfather
again. Every time I saw him on TV, calling me a delinquent punk, I knew…
somehow… we would be okay. And I know he’ll want to reward each and every
person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his
store. Here’s the phone number.’ The police and reporters were so moved that
they passed around the hat and raised money for three tickets on the next plane
to New York.
I knew there was no choice but to fly. I hoped Zeus would cut me some slack,
considering the circumstances. But it was still hard to force myself on board the
flight.
Takeoff was a nightmare. Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a Greek
monster. I didn’t unclench my hands from the armrests until we touched down
safely at La Guardia. The local press was waiting for us outside security, but we
managed to evade them thanks to Annabeth, who lured them away in her
invisible Yankees cap, shouting, ‘They’re over by the frozen yogurt! Come on!’,
then rejoined us at baggage claim.
We split up at the taxi stand. I told Annabeth and Grover to get back to HalfBlood Hill and let Chiron know what had happened. They protested, and it was
hard to let them go after all we’d been through, but I knew I had to do this last
part of the quest by myself. If things went wrong, if the gods didn’t believe me…
I wanted Annabeth and Grover to survive to tell Chiron the truth.
I hopped in a taxi and headed into Manhattan.
Thirty minutes later, I walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building.
I must have looked like a homeless kid, with my tattered clothes and my
scraped-up face. I hadn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours.
I went up to the guard at the front desk and said, ‘Six hundredth floor.’
He was reading a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front. I wasn’t
much into fantasy, but the book must’ve been good, because the guard took a
while to look up. ‘No such floor, kiddo.’
‘I need an audience with Zeus.’
He gave me a vacant smile. ‘Sorry?’
‘You heard me.’
I was about to decide this guy was just a regular mortal, and I’d better run for
it before he called the straitjacket patrol, when he said, ‘No appointment, no
audience, kiddo. Lord Zeus doesn’t see anyone unannounced.’
‘Oh, I think he’ll make an exception.’ I slipped off my backpack and unzipped
the top.
The guard looked inside at the metal cylinder, not getting what it was for a
few seconds. Then his face went pale. ‘That isn’t…’
‘Yes, it is,’ I promised. ‘You want me take it out and –’
‘No! No!’ He scrambled out of his seat, fumbled around his desk for a key
card, then handed it to me. ‘Insert this in the security slot. Make sure nobody
else is in the elevator with you.’
I did as he told me. As soon as the elevator doors closed, I slipped the key into
the slot. The card disappeared and a new button appeared on the console, a red
one that said 600.
I pressed it and waited, and waited.
Muzak played. ‘Raindrops keep falling on my head…’
Finally, ding. The doors slid open. I stepped out and almost had a heart attack.
I was standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below me
was Manhattan, from the height of an aeroplane. In front of me, white marble
steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. My eyes followed the stairway
to its end, where my brain just could not accept what I saw.
Look again, my brain said.
We’re looking, my eyes insisted. It’s really there.
From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a mountain, its summit
covered with snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multilevelled
palaces – a city of mansions – all with white-columned porticos, gilded terraces
and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand fires. Roads wound crazily up to
the peak, where the largest palace gleamed against the snow. Precariously
perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes. I could make out an
open-air market filled with colourful tents, a stone amphitheatre built on one side
of the mountain, a hippodrome and a coliseum on the other. It was an Ancient
Greek city, except it wasn’t in ruins. It was new, and clean, and colourful, the
way Athens must’ve looked twenty-five hundred years ago.
This place can’t be here, I told myself. The tip of a mountain hanging over
New York City like a billion-ton asteroid? How could something like that be
anchored above the Empire State Building, in plain sight of millions of people,
and not get noticed?
But here it was. And here I was.
My trip through Olympus was a daze. I passed some giggling wood nymphs
who threw olives at me from their garden. Hawkers in the market offered to sell
me ambrosia-on-a-stick, and a new shield, and a genuine glitter-weave replica of
the Golden Fleece, as seen on Hephaestus-TV The nine muses were tuning their
instruments for a concert in the park while a small crowd gathered – satyrs and
naiads and a bunch of good-looking teenagers who might’ve been minor gods
and goddesses. Nobody seemed worried about an impending civil war. In fact,
everybody seemed in a festive mood. Several of them turned to watch me pass,
and whispered to themselves.
I climbed the main road, towards the big palace at the peak. It was a reverse
copy of the palace in the Underworld. There, everything had been black and
bronze. Here, everything glittered white and silver.
I realized Hades must’ve built his palace to resemble this one. He wasn’t
welcomed in Olympus except on winter solstice, so he’d built his own Olympus
underground. Despite my bad experience with him, I felt a little sorry for the
guy. To be banished from this place seemed really unfair. It would make
anybody bitter.
Steps led up to a central courtyard. Past that, the throne room.
Room really isn’t the right word. The place made Grand Central Station look
like a broom closet. Massive columns rose to a domed ceiling, which was gilded
with moving constellations.
Twelve thrones, built for beings the size of Hades, were arranged in an
inverted U, just like the cabins at Camp Half-Blood. An enormous fire crackled
in the central hearth pit. The thrones were empty except for two at the end: the
head throne on the right, and the one to its immediate left. I didn’t have to be
told who the two gods were that were sitting there, waiting for me to approach. I
came towards them, my legs trembling.
The gods were in giant human form, as Hades had been, but I could barely
look at them without feeling a tingle, as if my body were starting to burn. Zeus,
the Lord of the Gods, wore a dark blue, pinstriped suit. He sat on a simple throne
of solid platinum. He had a well-trimmed beard, marbled grey and black like a
storm cloud. His face was proud and handsome and grim, his eyes rainy grey. As
I got nearer to him, the air crackled and smelled of ozone.
The god sitting next to him was his brother, without a doubt, but he was
dressed very differently. He reminded me of a beachcomber from Key West. He
wore leather sandals, khaki Bermuda shorts, and a Tommy Bahama shirt with
coconuts and parrots all over it. His skin was deeply tanned, his hands scarred
like an old-time fisherman’s. His hair was black, like mine. His face had that
same brooding look that had always got me branded a rebel. But his eyes, seagreen like mine, were surrounded by sun-crinkles that told me he smiled a lot,
too.
His throne was a deep-sea fisherman’s chair. It was the simple swivelling
kind, with a black leather seat and a built-in holster for a fishing pole. Instead of
a pole, the holster held a bronze trident, flickering with green light around the
tips.
The gods weren’t moving or speaking, but there was tension in the air, as if
they’d just finished an argument.
I approached the fisherman’s throne and knelt at his feet. ‘Father.’ I dared not
look up. My heart was racing. I could feel the energy emanating from the two
gods. If I said the wrong thing, I had no doubt they could blast me into dust.
To my left, Zeus spoke. ‘Should you not address the master of this house first,
boy?’
I kept my head down, and waited.
‘Peace, brother,’ Poseidon finally said. His voice stirred my oldest memories:
that warm glow I remembered as a baby, the sensation of this god’s hand on my
forehead. ‘The boy defers to his father. This is only right.’
‘You still claim him then?’ Zeus asked menacingly. ‘You claim this child
whom you sired against our sacred oath?’
‘I have admitted my wrongdoing,’ Poseidon said. ‘Now I would hear him
speak.’
Wrongdoing.
A lump welled up in my throat. Was that all I was? A wrongdoing? The result
of a god’s mistake?
‘I have spared him once already,’ Zeus grumbled. ‘Daring to fly through my
domain… pah! I should have blasted him out of the sky for his impudence.’
‘And risk destroying your own master bolt?’ Poseidon asked calmly. ‘Let us
hear him out, brother.’
Zeus grumbled some more. ‘I shall listen,’ he decided. ‘Then I shall make up
my mind whether or not to cast this boy down from Olympus.’
‘Perseus,’ Poseidon said. ‘Look at me.’
I did, and I wasn’t sure what I saw in his face. There was no clear sign of love
or approval. Nothing to encourage me. It was like looking at the ocean: some
days, you could tell what mood it was in. Most days, though, it was unreadable,
mysterious.
I got the feeling Poseidon really didn’t know what to think of me. He didn’t
know whether he was happy to have me as a son or not. In a strange way, I was
glad that Poseidon was so distant. If he’d tried to apologize, or told me he loved
me, or even smiled, it would’ve felt fake. Like a human dad, making some lame
excuse for not being around. I could live with that. After all, I wasn’t sure about
him yet, either.
‘Address Lord Zeus, boy,’ Poseidon told me. ‘Tell him your story.’
So I told Zeus everything, just as it had happened. I took out the metal
cylinder, which began sparking in the Sky Gods presence, and laid it at his feet.
There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the hearth fire.
Zeus opened his palm. The lightning bolt flew into it. As he closed his fist, the
metallic points flared with electricity, until he was holding what looked more
like the classic thunderbolt, a five-metre javelin of arcing, hissing energy that
made the hairs on my scalp rise.
‘I sense the boy tells the truth,’ Zeus muttered. ‘But that Ares would do such a
thing… it is most unlike him.’
‘He is proud and impulsive,’ Poseidon said. ‘It runs in the family.’
‘Lord?’ I asked.
They both said, ‘Yes?’
‘Ares didn’t act alone. Someone else – something else – came up with the
idea.’
I described my dreams, and the feeling I’d had on the beach, that momentary
breath of evil that had seemed to stop the world and made Ares back off from
killing me.
‘In the dreams,’ I said, ‘the voice told me to bring the bolt to the Underworld.
Ares hinted that he’d been having dreams, too. I think he was being used, just as
I was, to start a war.’
‘You are accusing Hades, after all?’ Zeus asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I mean, Lord Zeus, I’ve been in the presence of Hades. This
feeling on the beach was different. It was the same thing I felt when I got close
to that pit. That was the entrance to Tartarus, wasn’t it? Something powerful and
evil is stirring down there… something even older than the gods.’
Poseidon and Zeus looked at each other. They had a quick, intense discussion
in Ancient Greek. I only caught one word. Father.
Poseidon made some kind of suggestion, but Zeus cut him off. Poseidon tried
to argue. Zeus held up his hand angrily. ‘We will speak of this no more,’ Zeus
said. ‘I must go personally to purify this thunderbolt in the waters of Lemnos, to
remove the human taint from its metal.’
He rose and looked at me. His expression softened just a fraction of a degree.
‘You have done me a service, boy. Few heroes could have accomplished as
much.’
‘I had help, sir,’ I said. ‘Grover Underwood and Annabeth Chase –’
‘To show you my thanks, I shall spare your life. I do not trust you, Perseus
Jackson. I do not like what your arrival means for the future of Olympus. But for
the sake of peace in the family, I shall let you live.’
‘Um… thank you, sir.’
‘Do not presume to fly again. Do not let me find you here when I return.
Otherwise you shall taste this bolt. And it shall be your last sensation.’
Thunder shook the palace. With a blinding flash of lightning, Zeus was gone.
I was alone in the throne room with my father.
‘Your uncle,’ Poseidon sighed, ‘has always had a flair for dramatic exits. I
think he would’ve done well as the god of theatre.’
An uncomfortable silence.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘what was in that pit?’
Poseidon regarded me. ‘Have you not guessed?’
‘Kronos,’ I said. ‘The king of the Titans.’
Even in the throne room of Olympus, far away from Tartarus, the name
Kronos darkened the room, made the hearth fire seem not quite so warm on my
back.
Poseidon gripped his trident. ‘In the First War, Percy, Zeus cut our father,
Kronos, into a thousand pieces, just as Kronos had done to his own father,
Ouranos. Zeus cast Kronos’s remains into the darkest pit of Tartarus. The Titan
army was scattered, their mountain fortress on Etna destroyed, their monstrous
allies driven to the furthest corners of the earth. And yet Titans cannot die, any
more than we gods can. Whatever is left of Kronos is still alive in some hideous
way, still conscious in his eternal pain, still hungering for power.’
‘He’s healing,’ I said. ‘He’s coming back.’
Poseidon shook his head. ‘From time to time, over the aeons, Kronos has
stirred. He enters men’s nightmares and breathes evil thoughts. He wakens
restless monsters from the depths. But to suggest he could rise from the pit is
another thing.’
‘That’s what he intends, Father. That’s what he said.’
Poseidon was silent for a long time.
‘Lord Zeus has closed discussion on this matter. He will not allow talk of
Kronos. You have completed your quest, child. That is all you need to do.’
‘But –’ I stopped myself. Arguing would do no good. It would very possibly
anger the only god who I had on my side. ‘As… as you wish, Father.’
A faint smile played on his lips. ‘Obedience does not come naturally to you,
does it?’
‘No… sir.’
‘I must take some blame for that, I suppose. The sea does not like to be
restrained.’ He rose to his full height and took up his trident. Then he shimmered
and became the size of a regular man, standing directly in front of me. ‘You must
go, child. But first, know that your mother has returned.’
I stared at him, completely stunned. ‘My mother?’
‘You will find her at home. Hades sent her when you recovered his helmet.
Even the Lord of Death pays his debts.’
My heart was pounding. I couldn’t believe it. ‘Do you… would you…’
I wanted to ask if Poseidon would come with me to see her, but then I realized
that was ridiculous. I imagined loading the God of the Sea into a taxi and taking
him to the Upper East Side. If he’d wanted to see my mom all these years, he
would have. And there was Smelly Gabe to think about.
Poseidon’s eyes took on a little sadness. ‘When you return home, Percy, you
must make an important choice. You will find a package waiting in your room.’
‘A package?’
‘You will understand when you see it. No one can choose your path, Percy.
You must decide.’
I nodded, though I didn’t know what he meant.
‘Your mother is a queen among women,’ Poseidon said wistfully. ‘I had not
met such a mortal woman in a thousand years. Still… I am sorry you were born,
child. I have brought you a hero’s fate, and a hero’s fate is never happy. It is
never anything but tragic.’
I tried not to feel hurt. Here was my own dad, telling me he was sorry I’d been
born. ‘I don’t mind, Father.’
‘Not yet, perhaps,’ he said. ‘Not yet. But it was an unforgivable mistake on
my part.’
‘I’ll leave you then.’ I bowed awkwardly. ‘I – I won’t bother you again.’
I was five steps away when he called, ‘Perseus.’
I turned.
There was a different light in his eyes, a fiery kind of pride. ‘You did well,
Perseus. Do not misunderstand me. Whatever else you do, know that you are
mine. You are a true son of the Sea God.’
As I walked back through the city of the gods, conversations stopped. The
muses paused their concert. People and satyrs and naiads all turned towards me,
their faces filled with respect and gratitude and, as I passed, they knelt, as if I
were some kind of hero.
***
Fifteen minutes later, still in a trance, I was back on the streets of Manhattan.
I caught a taxi to my mom’s apartment, rang the doorbell, and there she was –
my beautiful mother, smelling of peppermint and licorice, the weariness and
worry evaporating from her face as soon as she saw me.
‘Percy! Oh, thank goodness. Oh, my baby.’
She crushed the air right out of me. We stood in the hallway as she cried and
ran her hands through my hair.
I’ll admit it – my eyes were a little misty, too. I was shaking, I was so relieved
to see her.
She told me she’d just appeared at the apartment that morning, scaring Gabe
half out of his wits. She didn’t remember anything since the Minotaur, and
couldn’t believe it when Gabe told her I was a wanted criminal, travelling across
the country, blowing up national monuments. She’d been going out of her mind
with worry all day because she hadn’t heard the news. Gabe had forced her to go
into work, saying she had a month’s salary to make up and she’d better get
started.
I swallowed back my anger and told her my own story. I tried to make it
sound less scary than it had been, but that wasn’t easy. I was just getting to the
fight with Ares when Gabe’s voice interrupted from the living room. ‘Hey, Sally!
That meat loaf done yet or what?’
She closed her eyes. ‘He isn’t going to be happy to see you, Percy. The store
got half a million phone calls today from Los Angeles… something about free
appliances.’
‘Oh, yeah. About that…’
She managed a weak smile. ‘Just don’t make him angrier, all right? Come on.’
In the month I’d been gone, the apartment had turned into Gabeland. Garbage
was ankle-deep on the carpet. The sofa had been reupholstered in beer cans.
Dirty socks and underwear hung off the lampshades.
Gabe and three of his big goony friends were playing poker at the table.
When Gabe saw me, his cigar dropped out of his mouth. His face got redder
than lava. ‘You got nerve coming here, you little punk. I thought the police –’
‘He’s not a fugitive after all,’ my mom interjected. ‘Isn’t that wonderful,
Gabe?’
Gabe looked back and forth between us. He didn’t seem to think my
homecoming was so wonderful.
‘Bad enough I had to give back your life insurance money, Sally,’ he growled.
‘Get me the phone. I’ll call the cops.’
‘Gabe, no!’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Did you just say “no”? You think I’m gonna put up
with this punk again? I can still press charges against him for ruining my
Camaro.’
‘But –’
He raised his hand, and my mother flinched.
For the first time, I realized something. Gabe had hit my mother. I didn’t know
when, or how much. But I was sure he’d done it. Maybe it had been going on for
years, when I wasn’t around.
A balloon of anger started expanding in my chest. I came towards Gabe,
instinctively taking my pen out of my pocket.
He just laughed. ‘What, punk? You gonna write on me? You touch me, and
you are going to jail forever, you understand?’
‘Hey, Gabe,’ his friend Eddie interrupted. ‘He’s just a kid.’
Gabe looked at him resentfully and mimicked in a falsetto voice: ‘Just a kid!’
His other friends laughed like idiots.
‘I’ll be nice to you, punk.’ Gabe showed me his tobacco-stained teeth. ‘I’ll
give you five minutes to get your stuff and clear out. After that, I call the police.’
‘Gabe!’ my mother pleaded.
‘He ran away,’ Gabe told her. ‘Let him stay gone.’
I was itching to uncap Riptide but, even if I did, the blade wouldn’t hurt
humans. And Gabe, by the loosest definition, was human.
My mother took my arm. ‘Please, Percy. Come on. We’ll go to your room.’
I let her pull me away, my hands still trembling with rage.
My room had been completely filled with Gabe’s junk. There were stacks of
used car batteries, a rotting bouquet of sympathy flowers with a card from
somebody who’d seen his Barbara Walters interview.
‘Gabe is just upset, honey,’ my mother told me. ‘I’ll talk to him later. I’m sure
it will work out.’
‘Mom, it’ll never work out. Not as long as Gabe’s here.’
She wrung her hands nervously. ‘I can… I’ll take you to work with me for the
rest of the summer. In the autumn, maybe there’s another boarding school –’
‘Mom.’
She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m trying, Percy. I just… I need some time.’
A package appeared on my bed. At least, I could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there
a moment before.
It was a battered cardboard box about the right size to fit a basketball. The
address on the mailing slip was in my own handwriting:
The Gods
Mount Olympus
600th Floor,
Empire State Building
New York, NY
With best wishes,
PERCY JACKSON
Over the top in black marker, in a man’s clear bold print, was the address of our
apartment, and the words: RETURN TO SENDER.
Suddenly I understood what Poseidon had told me on Olympus.
A package. A decision.
Whatever else you do, know that you are mine. You are a true son of the Sea
God.
I looked at my mother. ‘Mom, do you want Gabe gone?’
‘Percy, it isn’t that simple. I –’
‘Mom, just tell me. That jerk has been hitting you. Do you want him gone or
not?’
She hesitated, then nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘Yes, Percy. I do. And I’m
trying to get up my courage to tell him. But you can’t do this for me. You can’t
solve my problems.’
I looked at the box.
I could solve her problem. I wanted to slice that package open, plop it on the
poker table, and take out what was inside. I could start my very own statue
garden, right there in the living room.
That’s what a Greek hero would do in the stories, I thought. That’s what Gabe
deserves.
But a hero’s story always ended in tragedy. Poseidon had told me that.
I remembered the Underworld. I thought about Gabe’s spirit drifting forever in
the Fields of Asphodel, or condemned to some hideous torture behind the barbed
wire of the Fields of Punishment – an eternal poker game, sitting up to his waist
in boiling oil listening to opera music. Did I have the right to send someone
there? Even Gabe?
A month ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Now…
‘I can do it,’ I told my mom. ‘One look inside this box, and he’ll never bother
you again.’
She glanced at the package, and seemed to understand immediately. ‘No,
Percy,’ she said, stepping away. ‘You can’t.’
‘Poseidon called you a queen,’ I told her. ‘He said he hadn’t met a woman like
you in a thousand years.’
Her cheeks flushed. ‘Percy –’
‘You deserve better than this, Mom. You should go to college, get your
degree. You can write your novel, meet a nice guy maybe, live in a nice house.
You don’t need to protect me any more by staying with Gabe. Let me get rid of
him.’
She wiped a tear off her cheek. ‘You sound so much like your father,’ she said.
‘He offered to stop the tide for me once. He offered to build me a palace at the
bottom of the sea. He thought he could solve all my problems with a wave of his
hand.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
Her multicoloured eyes seemed to search inside me. ‘I think you know, Percy.
I think you’re enough like me to understand. If my life is going to mean
anything, I have to live it myself. I can’t let a god take care of me… or my son. I
have to… find the courage on my own. Your quest has reminded me of that.’
We listened to the sound of poker chips, swearing and ESPN from the livingroom television.
‘I’ll leave the box,’ I said. ‘If he threatens you…’
She looked pale, but she nodded. ‘Where will you go, Percy?’
‘Half-Blood Hill.’
‘For the summer… or forever?’
‘I guess that depends.’
We locked eyes, and I sensed that we had an agreement. We would see how
things stood at the end of the summer.
She kissed my forehead. ‘You’ll be a hero, Percy. You’ll be the greatest of all.’
I took one last look around my bedroom. I had a feeling I’d never see it again.
Then I walked with my mother to the front door.
‘Leaving so soon, punk?’ Gabe called after me. ‘Good riddance.’
I had one last twinge of doubt. How could I turn down the perfect chance to
take revenge on him? I was leaving here without saving my mother.
‘Hey, Sally,’ he yelled. ‘What about that meat loaf, huh?’
A steely look of anger flared in my mother’s eyes, and I thought, just maybe, I
was leaving her in good hands after all. Her own.
‘The meat loaf is coming right up, dear,’ she told Gabe. ‘Meat loaf surprise.’
She looked at me, and winked.
The last thing I saw as the door swung closed was my mother staring at Gabe,
as if she were contemplating how he would look as a garden statue.
22
The Prophecy Comes True
We were the first heroes to return alive to Half-Blood Hill since Luke, so of
course everybody treated us as if we’d won some reality TV contest. According
to camp tradition, we wore laurel wreaths to a big feast prepared in our honour,
then led a procession down to the bonfire, where we got to burn the burial
shrouds our cabins had made for us in our absence.
Annabeth’s shroud was so beautiful – grey silk with embroidered owls – I told
her it seemed a shame not to bury her in it. She punched me and told me to shut
up.
Being the son of Poseidon, I didn’t have any cabin mates, so the Ares cabin
had volunteered to make my shroud. They’d taken an old bedsheet and painted
smiley faces with X’ed-out eyes around the border, and the word LOSER
painted really big in the middle.
It was fun to burn.
As Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along and passed out toasted marshmallows, I
was surrounded by my old Hermes cabinmates, Annabeth’s friends from Athena
and Grover’s satyr buddies, who were admiring the brand new searcher’s licence
he’d received from the Council of Cloven Elders. The council had called
Grover’s performance on the quest ‘Brave to the point of indigestion. Hornsand-whiskers above anything we have seen in the past.’
The only ones not in a party mood were Clarisse and her cabinmates, whose
poisonous looks told me they’d never forgive me for disgracing their dad.
That was okay with me.
Even Dionysus’s welcome-home speech wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits.
‘Yes, yes, so the little brat didn’t get himself killed and now hell have an even
bigger head. Well, huzzah for that. In other announcements, there will be no
canoe races this Saturday…’
I moved back into cabin three, but it didn’t feel so lonely any more. I had my
friends to train with during the day. At night, I lay awake and listened to the sea,
knowing my father was out there. Maybe he wasn’t quite sure about me yet,
maybe he hadn’t even wanted me born, but he was watching. And so far, he was
proud of what I’d done.
As for my mother, she had a chance at a new life. Her letter arrived a week
after I got back to camp. She told me Gabe had left mysteriously – disappeared
off the face of the planet, in fact. She’d reported him missing to the police, but
she had a funny feeling they would never find him.
On a completely unrelated subject, she’d sold her first life-size concrete
sculpture, entitled The Poker Player, to a collector, through an art gallery in
Soho. She’d got so much money for it, she’d put a deposit down on a new
apartment and made a payment on her first term’s tuition at NYU. The Soho
gallery was clamouring for more of her work, which they called ‘a huge step
forward in super-ugly neorealism’.
But don’t worry, my mom wrote. I’m done with sculpture. I’ve disposed of that
box of tools you left me. It’s time for me to turn to writing.
At the bottom, she wrote a P.S.: Percy, I’ve found a good private school here
in the city. I’ve put a deposit down to hold you a spot, in case you want to enrol
for seventh grade. You could live at home. But if you want to go year-round at
Half-Blood Hill, I’ll understand.
I folded the note carefully and set it on my bedside table. Every night before I
went to sleep, I read it again, and I tried to decide how to answer her.
On the Fourth of July, the whole camp gathered at the beach for a fireworks
display by cabin nine. Being Hephaestus’s kids, they weren’t going to settle for a
few lame red-white-and-blue explosions. They’d anchored a barge offshore and
loaded it with rockets the size of Patriot missiles. According to Annabeth, who’d
seen the show before, the blasts would be sequenced so tightly they’d look like
frames of animation across the sky. The finale was supposed to be a couple of
thirty-metre-tall Spartan warriors who would crackle to life above the ocean,
fight a battle, then explode into a million colours.
As Annabeth and I were spreading a picnic blanket, Grover showed up to tell
us goodbye. He was dressed in his usual jeans and T-shirt and trainers, but in the
last few weeks he’d started to look older, almost high-school age. His goatee had
got thicker. He’d put on weight. His horns had grown a few centimetres at least,
so he now had to wear his rasta cap all the time to pass as human.
‘I’m off,’ he said. ‘I just came to say… well, you know.’
I tried to feel happy for him. After all, it wasn’t every day a satyr got
permission to go look for the great god Pan. But it was hard saying goodbye. I’d
only known Grover a year, yet he was my oldest friend.
Annabeth gave him a hug. She told him to keep his fake feet on.
I asked him where he was going to search first.
‘Kind of a secret,’ he said, looking embarrassed. ‘I wish you could come with
me, guys, but humans and Pan…’
‘We understand,’ Annabeth said. ‘You got enough tin cans for the trip?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And you remembered your reed pipes?’
‘Jeez, Annabeth,’ he grumbled. ‘You’re like an old mama goat.’
But he didn’t really sound annoyed.
He gripped his walking stick and slung a backpack over his shoulder. He
looked like any hitchhiker you might see on an American highway – nothing like
the little runty boy I used to defend from bullies at Yancy Academy.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘wish me luck.’
He gave Annabeth another hug. He clapped me on the shoulder, then headed
back through the dunes.
Fireworks exploded to life overhead: Hercules killing the Nemean lion,
Artemis chasing the boar, George Washington (who, by the way, was a son of
Athena) crossing the Delaware.
‘Hey, Grover,’ I called.
He turned at the edge of the woods.
‘Wherever you’re going – I hope they make good enchiladas.’
Grover grinned, and then he was gone, the trees closing around him.
‘We’ll see him again,’ Annabeth said.
I tried to believe it. The fact that no searcher had ever come back in two
thousand years… well, I decided not to think about that. Grover would be the
first. He had to be.
July passed.
I spent my days devising new strategies for capture-the-flag and making
alliances with the other cabins to keep the banner out of Ares’s hands. I got to
the top of the climbing wall for the first time without getting scorched by lava.
From time to time, I’d walk past the Big House, glance up at the attic
windows and think about the Oracle. I tried to convince myself that its prophecy
had come to completion.
You shall go west, and face the god who has turned.
Been there, done that – even though the traitor god had turned out to be Ares
rather than Hades.
You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned.
Check. One master bolt delivered. One helmet of darkness back on Hades’s
oily head.
You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.
This line still bothered me. Ares had pretended to be my friend, then betrayed
me. That must be what the Oracle meant….
And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.
I had failed to save my mom, but only because I’d let her save herself, and I
knew that was the right thing.
So why was I still uneasy?
The last night of the summer session came all too quickly.
The campers had one last meal together. We burned part of our dinner for the
gods. At the bonfire, the senior counsellors awarded the end-of-summer beads.
I got my own leather necklace, and when I saw the bead for my first summer, I
was glad the firelight covered my blushing. The design was pitch black, with a
sea-green trident shimmering in the centre.
‘The choice was unanimous,’ Luke announced. ‘This bead commemorates the
first son of the Sea God at this camp, and the quest he undertook into the darkest
part of the Underworld to stop a war!’
The entire camp got to their feet and cheered. Even Ares’s cabin felt obliged
to stand. Athena’s cabin steered Annabeth to the front so she could share in the
applause.
I’m not sure I’d ever felt as happy or sad as I did at that moment. I’d finally
found a family, people who cared about me and thought I’d done something
right. And in the morning, most of them would be leaving for the year.
***
The next morning, I found a form letter on my bedside table.
I knew Dionysus must’ve filled it out, because he stubbornly insisted on
getting my name wrong:
Dear Peter Johnson,
If you intend to stay at Camp Half-Blood yearround, you must inform the Big House by noon
today. If you do not announce your intentions,
we will assume you have vacated your cabin or
died a horrible death. Cleaning harpies will begin
work at sundown. They will be authorized to eat
any unregistered campers. All personal articles
left behind will be incinerated in the lava pit.
Have a nice day!
Mr D (Dionysus)
Camp Director, Olympian Council no.12
That’s another thing about ADHD. Deadlines just aren’t real to me until I’m
staring one in the face. Summer was over, and I still hadn’t answered my mother,
or the camp, about whether I’d be staying. Now I had only a few hours to decide.
The decision should have been easy. I mean, nine months of hero training or
nine months of sitting in a classroom – duh.
But there was my mom to consider. For the first time, I had the chance to live
with her for a whole year, without Gabe. I had a chance be at home and knock
around the city in my free time. I remembered what Annabeth had said so long
ago on our quest: The real world is where the monsters are. That’s where you
learn whether you’re any good or not.
I thought about the fate of Thalia, daughter of Zeus. I wondered how many
monsters would attack me if I left Half-Blood Hill. If I stayed in one place for a
whole school year, without Chiron or my friends around to help me, would my
mother and I even survive until the next summer? That was assuming the
spelling tests and five-paragraph essays didn’t kill me. I decided I’d go down to
the arena and do some sword practice. Maybe that would clear my head.
The campgrounds were mostly deserted, shimmering in the August heat. All
the campers were in their cabins packing up, or running around with brooms and
mops, getting ready for final inspection. Argus was helping some of the
Aphrodite kids haul their Gucci suitcases and makeup kits over the hill where
the camp’s shuttle bus would be waiting to take them to the airport.
Don’t think about leaving yet, I told myself. Just train.
I got to the sword-fighters’ arena and found that Luke had had the same idea.
His gym bag was plopped at the edge of the stage. He was working solo,
whacking away at battle dummies with a sword I’d never seen before. It must’ve
been a regular steel blade, because he was slashing the dummies’ heads right off,
stabbing through their straw-stuffed guts. His orange counsellor’s shirt was
dripping with sweat. His expression was so intense, his life might’ve really been
in danger. I watched, fascinated, as he disembowelled the whole row of
dummies, hacking off limbs and basically reducing them to a pile of straw and
armour.
They were only dummies, but I still couldn’t help being awed by Luke’s skill.
The guy was an incredible fighter. It made me wonder, again, how he possibly
could’ve failed at his quest.
Finally, he saw me, and stopped mid-swing. ‘Percy.’
‘Um, sorry,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘I just –’
‘It’s okay,’ he said, lowering his sword. ‘Just doing some last-minute practice.’
‘Those dummies won’t be bothering anybody any more.’
Luke shrugged. ‘We build new ones every summer.’
Now that his sword wasn’t swirling around, I could see something odd about
it. The blade was two different types of metal – one edge bronze, the other steel.
Luke noticed me looking at it. ‘Oh, this? New toy. This is Backbiter.’
‘Backbiter?’
Luke turned the blade in the light so it glinted wickedly. ‘One side is celestial
bronze. The other is tempered steel. Works on mortals and immortals both.’
I thought about what Chiron had told me when I started my quest – that a hero
should never harm mortals unless absolutely necessary.
‘I didn’t know they could make weapons like that.’
‘They probably can’t,’ Luke agreed. ‘It’s one of a kind.’
He gave me a tiny smile, then slid the sword into its scabbard. ‘Listen, I was
going to come looking for you. What do you say we go down to the woods one
last time, look for something to fight?’
I don’t know why I hesitated. I should’ve felt relieved that Luke was being so
friendly. Ever since I’d got back from the quest, he’d been acting a little distant.
I was afraid he might resent me for all the attention I’d had.
‘You think it’s a good idea?’ I asked. ‘I mean –’
‘Aw, come on.’ He rummaged in his gym bag and pulled out a six-pack of
Cokes. ‘Drinks are on me.’
I stared at the Cokes, wondering where the heck he’d got them. There were no
regular mortal sodas at the camp store. No way to smuggle them in, unless you
talked to a satyr maybe.
Of course, the magic dinner goblets would fill with anything you want, but it
just didn’t taste the same as a real Coke, straight out of the can.
Sugar and caffeine. My willpower crumbled.
‘Sure,’ I decided. ‘Why not?’
We walked down to the woods and kicked around for some kind of monster to
fight, but it was too hot. All the monsters with any sense must’ve been taking
siestas in their nice cool caves.
We found a shady spot by the creek where I’d broken Clarisse’s spear during
my first capture the flag game. We sat on a big rock, drank our Cokes and
watched the sunlight in the woods.
After a while Luke said, ‘You miss being on a quest?’
‘With monsters attacking me every metre? Are you kidding?’
Luke raised an eyebrow.
‘Yeah. I miss it,’ I admitted. ‘You?’
A shadow passed over his face.
I was used to hearing from the girls how good-looking Luke was, but at the
moment, he looked weary, and angry, and not at all handsome. His blond hair
was grey in the sunlight. The scar on his face looked deeper than usual. I could
imagine him as an old man.
‘I’ve lived at Half-Blood Hill year-round since I was fourteen,’ he told me.
‘Ever since Thalia… well, you know. I trained, and trained, and trained. I never
got to be a normal teenager, out there in the real world. Then they threw me one
quest, and when I came back, it was like, ‘Okay, ride’s over. Have a nice life.”
He crumpled his Coke can and threw it into the creek, which really shocked
me. One of the first things you learn at Camp Half-Blood is: don’t litter. You’ll
hear from the nymphs and the naiads. They’ll get even. You’ll crawl into bed one
night and find your sheets filled with centipedes and mud.
‘The heck with laurel wreaths,’ Luke said. ‘I’m not going to end up like those
dusty trophies in the Big House attic.’
‘You make it sound like you’re leaving.’
Luke gave me a twisted smile. ‘Oh, I’m leaving, all right, Percy. I brought you
down here to say goodbye.’
He snapped his fingers. A small fire burned a hole in the ground at my feet.
Out crawled something glistening black, about the size of my hand. A scorpion.
I started to go for my pen.
‘I wouldn’t,’ Luke cautioned. ‘Pit scorpions can jump up to five metres. Its
stinger can pierce right through your clothes. You’ll be dead in sixty seconds.’
‘Luke, what –’
Then it hit me.
You will be betrayed by one who calls you a friend.
‘You,’ I said.
He stood calmly and brushed off his jeans.
The scorpion paid him no attention. It kept its beady black eyes on me,
clamping its pincers as it crawled onto my shoe.
‘I saw a lot out there in the world, Percy,’ Luke said. ‘Didn’t you feel it – the
darkness gathering, the monsters growing stronger? Didn’t you realize how
useless it all is? All the heroics – being pawns of the gods. They should’ve been
overthrown thousands of years ago, but they’ve hung on, thanks to us halfbloods.’
I couldn’t believe this was happening.
‘Luke… you’re talking about our parents,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘That’s supposed to make me love them? Their precious “Western
civilization” is a disease, Percy. It’s killing the world. The only way to stop it is
to burn it to the ground, start over with something more honest.’
‘You’re as crazy as Ares.’
His eyes flared. ‘Ares is a fool. He never realized the true master he was
serving. If I had time, Percy, I could explain. But I’m afraid you won’t live that
long.’
The scorpion crawled onto my trouser leg.
There had to be a way out of this. I needed time to think.
‘Kronos,’ I said. ‘That’s who you serve.’
The air got colder.
‘You should be careful with names,’ Luke warned.
‘Kronos got you to steal the master bolt and the helmet. He spoke to you in
your dreams.’
Luke’s eye twitched. ‘He spoke to you, too, Percy. You should’ve listened.’
‘He’s brainwashing you, Luke.’
‘You’re wrong. He showed me that my talents are being wasted. You know
what my quest was two years ago, Percy? My father, Hermes, wanted me to steal
a golden apple from the Garden of the Hesperides and return it to Olympus.
After all the training I’d done, that was the best he could think up.’
‘That’s not an easy quest,’ I said. ‘Hercules did it.’
‘Exactly,’ Luke said. ‘Where’s the glory in repeating what others have done?
All the gods know how to do is replay their past. My heart wasn’t in it. The
dragon in the garden gave me this –’ he pointed angrily at his scar – ‘and when I
came back, all I got was pity. I wanted to pull Olympus down stone by stone
right then, but I bided my time. I began to dream of Kronos. He convinced me to
steal something worthwhile, something no hero had ever had the courage to take.
When we went on that winter-solstice field trip, while the other campers were
asleep, I sneaked into the throne room and took Zeus’s master bolt right from his
chair. Hades’s helmet of darkness, too. You wouldn’t believe how easy it was.
The Olympians are so arrogant; they never dreamed someone would dare steal
from them. Their security is horrible. I was halfway across New Jersey before I
heard the storms rumbling, and I knew they’d discovered my theft.’
The scorpion was sitting on my knee now, staring at me with its glittering
eyes. I tried to keep my voice level. ‘So why didn’t you bring the items to
Kronos?’
Luke’s smile wavered. ‘I… I got overconfident. Zeus sent out his sons and
daughters to find the stolen bolt – Artemis, Apollo, my father, Hermes. But it
was Ares who caught me. I could have beaten him, but I wasn’t careful enough.
He disarmed me took the items of power, threatened to return them to Olympus
and burn me alive. Then Kronos’s voice came to me and told me what to say. I
put the idea in Ares’s head about a great war between the gods. I said all he had
to do was hide the items away for a while and watch the others fight. Ares got a
wicked gleam in his eyes. I knew he was hooked. He let me go, and I returned to
Olympus before anyone noticed my absence.’ Luke drew his new sword. He ran
his thumb down the flat of the blade, as if he were hypnotized by its beauty.
‘Afterwards, the Lord of the Titans… h-he punished me with nightmares. I
swore not to fail again. Back at Camp Half-Blood, in my dreams, I was told that
a second hero would arrive, one who could be tricked into taking the bolt and the
helmet the rest of the way – from Ares down to Tartarus.’
‘You summoned the hellhound, that night in the forest.’
‘We had to make Chiron think the camp wasn’t safe for you, so he would start
you on your quest. We had to confirm his fears that Hades was after you. And it
worked.’
‘The flying shoes were cursed,’ I said. ‘They were supposed to drag me and
the backpack into Tartarus.’
‘And they would have, if you’d been wearing them. But you gave them to the
satyr, which wasn’t part of the plan. Grover messes up everything he touches. He
even confused the curse.’
Luke looked down at the scorpion, which was now sitting on my thigh. ‘You
should have died in Tartarus, Percy. But don’t worry, I’ll leave you with my little
friend to set things right.’
‘Thalia gave her life to save you,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘And this is how
you repay her?’
‘Don’t speak of Thalia!’ he shouted. ‘The gods let her die! That’s one of the
many things they will pay for.’
‘You’re being used, Luke. You and Ares both. Don’t listen to Kronos.’
‘I’ve been used?’ Luke’s voice turned shrill. ‘Look at yourself. What has your
dad ever done for you? Kronos will rise. You’ve only delayed his plans. He will
cast the Olympians into Tartarus and drive humanity back to their caves. All
except the strongest – the ones who serve him.’
‘Call off the bug,’ I said. ‘If you’re so strong, fight me yourself.’
Luke smiled. ‘Nice try, Percy. But I’m not Ares. You can’t bait me. My lord is
waiting, and he’s got plenty of quests for me to undertake.’
‘Luke –’
‘Goodbye, Percy. There is a new Golden Age coming. You won’t be part of
it.’
He slashed his sword in an arc and disappeared in a ripple of darkness.
The scorpion lunged.
I swatted it away with my hand and uncapped my sword. The thing jumped at
me and I cut it in half in midair.
I was about to congratulate myself until I looked down at my hand. My palm
had a huge red welt, oozing and smoking with yellow guck. The thing had got
me after all.
My ears pounded. My vision went foggy. The water, I thought. It had healed
me before.
I stumbled to the creek and submerged my hand, but nothing seemed to
happen. The poison was too strong. My vision was getting dark. I could barely
stand up.
Sixty seconds, Luke had told me.
I had to get back to camp. If I collapsed out here, my body would be dinner
for a monster. Nobody would ever know what had happened.
My legs felt like lead. My forehead was burning. I stumbled towards the
camp, and the nymphs stirred from their trees.
‘Help,’ I croaked. ‘Please…’
Two of them took my arms, pulling me along. I remember making it to the
clearing, a counsellor shouting for help, a centaur blowing a conch horn.
Then everything went black.
***
I woke with a drinking straw in my mouth. I was sipping something that tasted
like liquid chocolate-chip cookies.
Nectar.
I opened my eyes.
I was propped up in bed in the sickroom of the Big House, my right hand
bandaged like a club. Argus stood guard in the corner. Annabeth sat next to me,
holding my nectar glass and dabbing a washcloth on my forehead.
‘Here we are again,’ I said.
‘You idiot,’ Annabeth said, which is how I knew she was overjoyed to see me
conscious. ‘You were green and turning grey when we found you. If it weren’t
for Chiron’s healing…’
‘Now, now,’ Chiron’s voice said. ‘Percy’s constitution deserves some of the
credit.’
He was sitting near the foot of my bed in human form, which was why I
hadn’t noticed him yet. His lower half was magically compacted into the
wheelchair, his upper half dressed in a coat and tie. He smiled, but his face
looked weary and pale, the way it did when he’d been up all night grading Latin
papers.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Like my insides have been frozen, then microwaved.’
‘Apt, considering that was pit scorpion venom. Now you must tell me, if you
can, exactly what happened.’
Between sips of nectar, I told them the story.
The room was quiet for a long time.
‘I can’t believe that Luke…’ Annabeth’s voice faltered. Her expression turned
angry and sad. ‘Yes. Yes, I can believe it. May the gods curse him… He was
never the same after his quest.’
‘This must be reported to Olympus,’ Chiron murmured. ‘I will go at once.’
‘Luke is out there right now,’ I said. ‘I have to go after him.’
Chiron shook his head. ‘No, Percy. The gods –’
‘Won’t even talk about Kronos,’ I snapped. ‘Zeus declared the matter closed!’
‘Percy, I know this is hard. But you must not rush out for vengeance. You
aren’t ready.’
I didn’t like it, but part of me suspected Chiron was right. One look at my
hand, and I knew I wasn’t going to be sword fighting any time soon. ‘Chiron…
your prophecy from the Oracle… it was about Kronos, wasn’t it? Was I in it?
And Annabeth?’
Chiron glanced nervously at the ceiling. ‘Percy, it isn’t my place –’
‘You’ve been ordered not to talk to me about it, haven’t you?’
His eyes were sympathetic, but sad. ‘You will be a great hero, child. I will do
my best to prepare you. But if I’m right about the path ahead of you…’
Thunder boomed overhead, rattling the windows.
‘All right!’ Chiron shouted. ‘Fine!’
He sighed in frustration. ‘The gods have their reasons, Percy. Knowing too
much of your future is never a good thing.’
‘We can’t just sit back and do nothing,’ I said.
‘We will not sit back,’ Chiron promised. ‘But you must be careful. Kronos
wants you to come unravelled. He wants your life disrupted, your thoughts
clouded with fear and anger. Do not give him what he wants. Train patiently.
Your time will come.’
‘Assuming I live that long.’
Chiron put his hand on my ankle. ‘You’ll have to trust me, Percy. You will
live. But first you must decide your path for the coming year. I cannot tell you
the right choice…’ I got the feeling that he had a very definite opinion, and it
was taking all his willpower not to advise me. ‘… But you must decide whether
to stay at Camp Half-Blood year-round, or return to the mortal world for seventh
grade and be a summer camper. Think on that. When I get back from Olympus,
you must tell me your decision.’
I wanted to protest. I wanted to ask him more questions. But his expression
told me there could be no more discussion; he had said as much as he could.
‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ Chiron promised. ‘Argus will watch over you.’
He glanced at Annabeth. ‘Oh, and, my dear… whenever you’re ready, they’re
here.’
‘Who’s here?’ I asked.
Nobody answered.
Chiron rolled himself out of the room. I heard the wheels of his chair clunk
carefully down the front steps, two at a time.
Annabeth studied the ice in my drink.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing.’ She set the glass on the table. ‘I… just took your advice about
something. You… um… need anything?’
‘Yeah. Help me up. I want to go outside.’
‘Percy, that isn’t a good idea.’
I slid my legs out of bed. Annabeth caught me before I could crumple to the
floor. A wave of nausea rolled over me.
Annabeth said, ‘I told you…’
‘I’m fine,’ I insisted. I didn’t want to lie in bed like an invalid while Luke was
out there planning to destroy the Western world.
I managed a step forward. Then another, still leaning heavily on Annabeth.
Argus followed us outside, but he kept his distance.
By the time we reached the porch, my face was beaded with sweat. My
stomach had twisted into knots. But I had managed to make it all the way to the
railing.
It was dusk. The camp looked completely deserted. The cabins were dark and
the volleyball pit silent. No canoes cut the surface of the lake. Beyond the woods
and the strawberry fields, the Long Island Sound glittered in the last light of the
sun.
‘What are you going to do?’ Annabeth asked me.
‘I don’t know.’
I told her I got the feeling Chiron wanted me to stay year-round, to put in
more individual training time, but I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted. I admitted
I’d feel bad about leaving her alone, though, with only Clarisse for company…
Annabeth pursed her lips, then said quietly, ‘I’m going home for the year,
Percy.’
I stared at her. ‘You mean, to your dad’s?’
She pointed towards the crest of Half-Blood Hill. Next to Thalia’s pine tree, at
the very edge of the camp’s magical boundaries, a family stood silhouetted – two
little children, a woman and a tall man with blond hair. They seemed to be
waiting. The man was holding a backpack that looked like the one Annabeth had
got from Waterland in Denver.
‘I wrote him a letter when we got back,’ Annabeth said. ‘Just like you
suggested. I told him… I was sorry. I’d come home for the school year if he still
wanted me. He wrote back immediately. We decided… we’d give it another try.’
‘That took guts.’
She pursed her lips. ‘You won’t try anything stupid during the school year,
will you? At least… not without sending me an iris-message?’
I managed a smile. ‘I won’t go looking for trouble. I usually don’t have to.’
‘When I get back next summer,’ she said, ‘we’ll hunt down Luke. We’ll ask
for a quest, but if we don’t get approval, we’ll sneak off and do it anyway.
Agreed?’
‘Sounds like a plan worthy of Athena.’
She held out her hand. I shook it.
‘Take care, Seaweed Brain,’ Annabeth told me. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
‘You too, Wise Girl.’
I watched her walk up the hill and join her family. She gave her father an
awkward hug and looked back at the valley one last time. She touched Thalia’s
pine tree, then allowed herself to be led over the crest and into the mortal world.
For the first time at camp, I felt truly alone. I looked out at Long Island Sound
and I remembered my father saying, The sea does not like to be restrained.
I made my decision.
I wondered, if Poseidon were watching, would he approve of my choice?
‘I’ll be back next summer,’ I promised him. ‘I’ll survive until then. After all, I
am your son.’ I asked Argus to take me down to cabin three, so I could pack my
bags for home.
Acknowledgements
Without the assistance of numerous valiant helpers, I would have been slain by
monsters many times over as I endeavoured to bring this story to print. Thanks
to my elder son, Haley Michael, who heard the story first; my younger son,
Patrick John, who at the age of six is the levelheaded one in the family; and my
wife, Becky, who puts up with my many long hours at Camp Half-Blood.
Thanks also to my cadre of middle-school beta-testers: Travis Stoll, clever and
quick as Hermes; C. C. Kellogg, beloved as Athena; Allison Bauer, clear-eyed as
Artemis the Huntress; and Mrs Margaret Floyd, the wise and kindly seer of
middle-school English. My appreciation also to Professor Egbert J. Bakker,
classicist extraordinaire; Nancy Gallt, agent summa cum laude; Jonathan
Burnham, Jennifer Besser, and Sarah Hughes for believing in Percy.
RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
1 • My Best Friend Shops for a Wedding Dress
2 • I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals
3 • We Hail the Taxi of Eternal Torment
4 • Tyson Plays with Fire
5 • I Get a New Cabin Mate
6 • Demon Pigeons Attack
7 • I Accept Gifts from a Stranger
8 • We Board the Princess Andromeda
9 • I Have the Worst Family Reunion Ever
10 • We Hitch a Ride with Dead Confederates
11 • Clarisse Blows Up Everything
12 • We Check In to C.C.’s Spa & Resort
13 • Annabeth Tries to Swim Home
14 • We Meet the Sheep of Doom
15 • Nobody Gets the Fleece
16 • I Go Down with the Ship
17 • We Get a Surprise on Miami Beach
18 • The Party Ponies Invade
19 • The Chariot Race Ends with a Bang
20 • The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well
To Patrick John Riordan, the best storyteller in the family
1
My Best Friend Shops for a Wedding Dress
My nightmare started like this.
I was standing on a deserted street in some little beach town. It was the middle
of the night. A storm was blowing. Wind and rain ripped at the palm trees along
the sidewalk. Pink and yellow stucco buildings lined the street, their windows
boarded up. A block away, past a line of hibiscus bushes, the ocean churned.
Florida, I thought. Though I wasn’t sure how I knew that. I’d never been to
Florida.
Then I heard hooves clattering against the pavement. I turned and saw my
friend Grover running for his life.
Yeah, I said hooves.
Grover is a satyr. From the waist up, he looks like a typical gangly teenager
with a peach-fuzz goatee and a bad case of acne. He walks with a strange limp,
but unless you happen to catch him without his trousers on (which I don’t
recommend), you’d never know there was anything un-human about him. Baggy
jeans and fake feet hide the fact that he’s got furry hindquarters and hooves.
Grover had been my best friend in sixth grade. He’d gone on this adventure
with me and a girl named Annabeth to save the world, but I hadn’t seen him
since last July, when he set off alone on a dangerous quest – a quest no satyr had
ever returned from.
Anyway, in my dream, Grover was hauling goat tail, holding his human shoes
in his hands the way he does when he needs to move fast. He clopped past the
little tourist shops and surfboard rental places. The wind bent the palm trees
almost to the ground.
Grover was terrified of something behind him. He must’ve just come from the
beach. Wet sand was caked in his fur. He’d escaped from somewhere. He was
trying to get away from … something.
A bone-rattling growl cut through the storm. Behind Grover, at the far end of
the block, a shadowy figure loomed. It swatted aside a street lamp, which burst
in a shower of sparks.
Grover stumbled, whimpering in fear. He muttered to himself, Have to get
away. Have to warn them!
I couldn’t see what was chasing him, but I could hear it muttering and cursing.
The ground shook as it got closer. Grover dashed around a street corner and
faltered. He’d run into a dead-end courtyard full of shops. No time to back up.
The nearest door had been blown open by the storm. The sign above the
darkened display window read: , ST AUGUSTINE BRIDAL BOUTIQUE.
Grover dashed inside. He dived behind a rack of wedding dresses.
The monster’s shadow passed in front of the shop. I could smell the thing – a
sickening combination of wet sheep wool and rotten meat and that weird sour
body odour only monsters have, like a skunk that’s been living off Mexican
food.
Grover trembled behind the wedding dresses. The monster’s shadow passed
on.
Silence except for the rain. Grover took a deep breath. Maybe the thing was
gone.
Then lightning flashed. The entire front of the store exploded, and a
monstrous voice bellowed, ‘MIIIIINE!’
I sat bolt upright, shivering in my bed.
There was no storm. No monster.
Morning sunlight filtered through my bedroom window.
I thought I saw a shadow flicker across the glass – a humanlike shape. But
then there was a knock on my bedroom door – my mom called, ‘Percy, you’re
going to be late’ – and the shadow at the window disappeared.
It must’ve been my imagination. A fifth-storey window with a rickety old fire
escape … there couldn’t have been anyone out there.
‘Come on, dear,’ my mother called again. ‘Last day of school. You should be
excited! You’ve almost made it!’
‘Coming,’ I managed.
I felt under my pillow. My fingers closed reassuringly around the ballpoint
pen I always slept with. I brought it out, studied the Ancient Greek writing
engraved on the side: Anaklusmos. Riptide.
I thought about uncapping it, but something held me back. I hadn’t used
Riptide for so long …
Besides, my mom had made me promise not to use deadly weapons in the
apartment after I’d swung a javelin the wrong way and taken out her china
cabinet. I put Anaklusmos on my nightstand and dragged myself out of bed.
I got dressed as quickly as I could. I tried not to think about my nightmare or
monsters or the shadow at my window.
Have to get away. Have to warn them!
What had Grover meant?
I made a three-fingered claw over my heart and pushed outwards – an ancient
gesture Grover had once taught me for warding off evil.
The dream couldn’t have been real.
Last day of school. My mom was right, I should have been excited. For the
first time in my life, I’d almost made it an entire year without getting expelled.
No weird accidents. No fights in the classroom. No teachers turning into
monsters and trying to kill me with poisoned cafeteria food or exploding
homework. Tomorrow, I’d be on my way to my favourite place in the world –
Camp Half-Blood.
Only one more day to go. Surely even I couldn’t mess that up.
As usual, I didn’t have a clue how wrong I was.
My mom made blue waffles and blue eggs for breakfast. She’s funny that way,
celebrating special occasions with blue food. I think it’s her way of saying
anything is possible. Percy can pass seventh grade. Waffles can be blue. Little
miracles like that.
I ate at the kitchen table while my mom washed dishes. She was dressed in her
work uniform – a starry blue skirt and a red-and-white striped blouse she wore to
sell candy at Sweet on America. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a
ponytail.
The waffles tasted great, but I guess I wasn’t digging in like I usually did. My
mom looked over and frowned. ‘Percy, are you all right?’
‘Yeah … fine.’
But she could always tell when something was bothering me. She dried her
hands and sat down across from me. ‘School, or…’
She didn’t need to finish. I knew what she was asking.
‘I think Grover’s in trouble,’ I said, and I told her about my dream.
She pursed her lips. We didn’t talk much about the other part of my life. We
tried to live as normally as possible, but my mom knew all about Grover.
‘I wouldn’t be too worried, dear,’ she said. ‘Grover is a big satyr now. If there
were a problem, I’m sure we would’ve heard from … from camp…’ Her
shoulders tensed as she said the word camp.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you what. This afternoon we’ll celebrate the end
of school. I’ll take you and Tyson to Rockefeller Center – to that skateboard
shop you like.’
Oh, man, that was tempting. We were always struggling with money. Between
my mom’s night classes and my private school tuition, we could never afford to
do special stuff like shop for a skateboard. But something in her voice bothered
me.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘I thought we were packing me up for camp tonight.’
She twisted her dishcloth. ‘Ah, dear, about that … I got a message from
Chiron last night.’
My heart sank. Chiron was the activities director at Camp Half-Blood. He
wouldn’t contact us unless something serious was going on. ‘What did he say?’
‘He thinks … it might not be safe for you to come to camp just yet. We might
have to postpone.’
‘Postpone? Mom, how could it not be safe? I’m a half-blood! It’s like the only
safe place on earth for me!’
‘Usually, dear. But with the problems they’re having –’
‘What problems?’
‘Percy … I’m very, very sorry. I was hoping to talk to you about it this
afternoon. I can’t explain it all now. I’m not even sure Chiron can. Everything
happened so suddenly.’
My mind was reeling. How could I not go to camp? I wanted to ask a million
questions, but just then the kitchen clock chimed the half-hour.
My mom looked almost relieved. ‘Seven thirty, dear. You should go. Tyson
will be waiting.’
‘But –’
‘Percy, we’ll talk this afternoon. Go on to school.’
That was the last thing I wanted to do, but my mom had this fragile look in her
eyes – a kind of warning, like if I pushed her too hard she’d start to cry. Besides,
she was right about my friend Tyson. I had to meet him at the subway station on
time or he’d get upset. He was scared of travelling underground alone.
I gathered up my stuff, but I stopped in the doorway. ‘Mom, this problem at
camp. Does it … could it have anything to do with my dream about Grover?’
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘We’ll talk this afternoon, dear. I’ll explain … as
much as I can.’
Reluctantly, I told her goodbye. I jogged downstairs to catch the Number Two
train.
I didn’t know it at the time, but my mom and I would never get to have our
afternoon talk.
In fact, I wouldn’t be seeing home for a long, long time.
As I stepped outside, I glanced at the brownstone building across the street.
Just for a second I saw a dark shape in the morning sunlight – a human silhouette
against the brick wall, a shadow that belonged to no one.
Then it rippled and vanished.
2
I Play Dodgeball with Cannibals
My day started normal. Or as normal as it ever gets at Meriwether College Prep.
See, it’s this ‘progressive’ school in downtown Manhattan, which means we
sit on beanbag chairs instead of at desks, and we don’t get grades and the
teachers wear jeans and rock concert T-shirts to work.
That’s all cool with me. I mean, I’m ADHD and dyslexic, like most halfbloods, so I’d never done that great in regular schools even before they kicked
me out. The only bad thing about Meriwether was that the teachers always
looked on the bright side of things, and the kids weren’t always … well, bright.
Take my first class today: English. The whole middle school had read this
book called Lord of the Flies, where all these kids get marooned on an island and
go psycho. So for our final exam, our teachers sent us into the yard to spend an
hour with no adult supervision to see what would happen. What happened was a
massive wedgie contest between the seventh and eighth graders, two pebble
fights and a full-tackle basketball game. The school bully, Matt Sloan, led most
of those activities.
Sloan wasn’t big or strong, but he acted like he was. He had eyes like a pit
bull, and shaggy black hair, and he always dressed in expensive but sloppy
clothes, like he wanted everybody to see how little he cared about his family’s
money. One of his front teeth was chipped from the time he’d taken his daddy’s
Porsche for a joyride and run into a PLEASE SLOW DOWN FOR CHILDREN
sign.
Anyway, Sloan was giving everybody wedgies until he made the mistake of
trying it on my friend Tyson.
Tyson was the only homeless kid at Meriwether College Prep. As near as my
mom and I could figure, he’d been abandoned by his parents when he was very
young, probably because he was so … different. He was two metres tall and built
like the Abominable Snowman, but he cried a lot and was scared of just about
everything, including his own reflection. His face was kind of misshapen and
brutal-looking. I couldn’t tell you what colour his eyes were, because I could
never make myself look higher than his crooked teeth. His voice was deep, but
he talked funny, like a much younger kid – I guess because he’d never gone to
school before coming to Meriwether. He wore tattered jeans, grimy size-twenty
sneakers and a plaid flannel shirt with holes in it. He smelled like a New York
City alleyway, because that’s where he lived, in a cardboard refrigerator box off
72nd Street.
Meriwether Prep had adopted him as a community service project so all the
students could feel good about themselves. Unfortunately, most of them couldn’t
stand Tyson. Once they discovered he was a big softie, despite his massive
strength and his scary looks, they made themselves feel good by picking on him.
I was pretty much his only friend, which meant he was my only friend.
My mom had complained to the school a million times that they weren’t doing
enough to help him. She’d called social services, but nothing ever seemed to
happen. The social workers claimed Tyson didn’t exist. They swore up and down
that they’d visited the alley we described and couldn’t find him, though how you
miss a giant kid living in a refrigerator box, I don’t know.
Anyway, Matt Sloan snuck up behind him and tried to give him a wedgie, and
Tyson panicked. He swatted Sloan away a little too hard. Sloan flew five metres
and got tangled in the little kids’ tyre swing.
‘You freak!’ Sloan yelled. ‘Why don’t you go back to your cardboard box!’
Tyson started sobbing. He sat down on the jungle gym so hard he bent the bar,
and buried his head in his hands.
‘Take it back, Sloan!’ I shouted.
Sloan just sneered at me. ‘Why do you even bother, Jackson? You might have
friends if you weren’t always sticking up for that freak.’
I balled my fists. I hoped my face wasn’t as red as it felt. ‘He’s not a freak.
He’s just…’
I tried to think of the right thing to say, but Sloan wasn’t listening. He and his
big ugly friends were too busy laughing. I wondered if it were my imagination,
or if Sloan had more goons hanging around him than usual. I was used to seeing
him with two or three, but today he had like, half a dozen more, and I was pretty
sure I’d never seen them before.
‘Just wait till PE, Jackson,’ Sloan called. ‘You are so dead.’
When first period ended, our English teacher Mr de Milo came outside to
inspect the carnage. He pronounced that we’d understood Lord of the Flies
perfectly. We all passed his course, and we should never, never grow up to be
violent people. Matt Sloan nodded earnestly, then gave me a chip-toothed grin.
I had to promise to buy Tyson an extra peanut butter sandwich at lunch to get
him to stop sobbing.
‘I … I am a freak?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I promised, gritting my teeth. ‘Matt Sloan is the freak.’
Tyson sniffled. ‘You are a good friend. Miss you next year if … if I can’t…’
His voice trembled. I realized he didn’t know if he’d be invited back next year
for the community service project. I wondered if the headmaster had even
bothered talking to him about it.
‘Don’t worry, big guy,’ I managed. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
Tyson gave me such a grateful look I felt like a big liar. How could I promise
a kid like him that anything would be fine?
Our next exam was science. Mrs Tesla told us that we had to mix chemicals until
we succeeded in making something explode. Tyson was my lab partner. His
hands were way too big for the tiny vials we were supposed to use. He
accidentally knocked a tray of chemicals off the counter and made an orange
mushroom cloud in the trashcan.
After Mrs Tesla evacuated the lab and called the hazardous waste removal
squad, she praised Tyson and me for being natural chemists. We were the first
ones who’d ever aced her exam in under thirty seconds.
I was glad the morning went fast, because it kept me from thinking too much
about my problems. I couldn’t stand the idea that something might be wrong at
camp. Even worse, I couldn’t shake the memory of my bad dream. I had a
terrible feeling that Grover was in danger.
In social studies, while we were drawing latitude/longitude maps, I opened my
notebook and stared at the photo inside – my friend Annabeth on vacation in
Washington, DC. She was wearing jeans and a denim jacket over her orange
Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. Her blonde hair was pulled back in a bandanna. She
was standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial with her arms crossed, looking
extremely pleased with herself, like she’d personally designed the place. See,
Annabeth wants to be an architect when she grows up, so she’s always visiting
famous monuments and stuff. She’s weird that way. She’d e-mailed me the
picture after spring break, and every once in a while I’d look at it just to remind
myself she was real and Camp Half-Blood hadn’t just been my imagination.
I wished Annabeth were here. She’d know what to make of my dream. I’d
never admit it to her, but she was smarter than me, even if she was annoying
sometimes.
I was about to close my notebook when Matt Sloan reached over and ripped
the photo out of the rings.
‘Hey!’ I protested.
Sloan checked out the picture and his eyes got wide. ‘No way, Jackson. Who
is that? She is not your –’
‘Give it back!’ My ears felt hot.
Sloan handed the photo to his ugly buddies, who snickered and started ripping
it up to make spit wads. They were new kids who must’ve been visiting, because
they were all wearing those stupid HI! MY NAME IS: tags from the admissions
office. They must’ve had a weird sense of humour, too, because they’d all filled
in strange names like: MARROW SUCKER, SKULL EATER and JOE BOB.
No human beings had names like that.
‘These guys are moving here next year,’ Sloan bragged, like that was
supposed to scare me. ‘I bet they can pay the tuition, too, unlike your retard
friend.’
‘He’s not retarded.’ I had to try really, really hard not to punch Sloan in the
face.
‘You’re such a loser, Jackson. Good thing I’m gonna put you out of your
misery next period.’
His huge buddies chewed up my photo. I wanted to pulverize them, but I was
under strict orders from Chiron never to take my anger out on regular mortals,
no matter how obnoxious they were. I had to save my fighting for monsters.
Still, part of me thought, if Sloan only knew who I really was…
The bell rang.
As Tyson and I were leaving class, a girl’s voice whispered, ‘Percy!’
I looked around the locker area, but nobody was paying me any attention.
Like any girl at Meriwether would ever be caught dead calling my name.
Before I had time to consider whether or not I’d been imagining things, a
crowd of kids rushed for the gym, carrying Tyson and me along with them. It
was time for PE. Our coach had promised us a free-for-all dodgeball game, and
Matt Sloan had promised to kill me.
***
The gym uniform at Meriwether is sky-blue shorts and tie-dyed T-shirts.
Fortunately, we did most of our athletic stuff inside, so we didn’t have to jog
through Tribeca looking like a bunch of boot-camp hippie children.
I changed as quickly as I could in the locker room because I didn’t want to
deal with Sloan. I was about to leave when Tyson called, ‘Percy?’
He hadn’t changed yet. He was standing by the weight-room door, clutching
his gym clothes. ‘Will you … uh…’
‘Oh. Yeah.’ I tried not to sound aggravated about it. ‘Yeah, sure, man.’
Tyson ducked inside the weight room. I stood guard outside the door while he
changed. I felt kind of awkward doing this, but he asked me to most days. I think
it’s because he’s completely hairy and he’s got weird scars on his back that I’ve
never had the courage to ask him about.
Anyway, I’d learned the hard way that if people teased Tyson while he was
dressing, he’d get upset and start ripping the doors off lockers.
When we got into the gym, Coach Nunley was sitting at his little desk reading
Sports Illustrated. Nunley was about a million years old, with bifocals and no
teeth and a greasy wave of grey hair. He reminded me of the Oracle at Camp
Half-Blood – which was a shrivelled-up mummy – except Coach Nunley moved
a lot less and he never billowed green smoke. Well, at least not that I’d observed.
Matt Sloan said, ‘Coach, can I be captain?’
‘Eh?’ Coach Nunley looked up from his magazine. ‘Yeah,’ he mumbled. ‘Mmhmm.’
Sloan grinned and took charge of the picking. He made me the other team’s
captain, but it didn’t matter who I picked, because all the jocks and the popular
kids moved over to Sloan’s side. So did the big group of visitors.
On my side I had Tyson, Corey Bailer the computer geek, Raj Mandali the
calculus whiz, and a half-dozen other kids who always got harassed by Sloan
and his gang. Normally I would’ve been okay with just Tyson – he was worth
half a team all by himself – but the visitors on Sloan’s team were almost as tall
and strong-looking as Tyson, and there were six of them.
Matt Sloan spilled a cage full of balls in the middle of the gym.
‘Scared,’ Tyson mumbled. ‘Smell funny.’
I looked at him. ‘What smells funny?’ Because I didn’t figure he was talking
about himself.
‘Them.’ Tyson pointed at Sloan’s new friends. ‘Smell funny.’
The visitors were cracking their knuckles, eyeing us like it was slaughter time.
I couldn’t help wondering where they were from. Someplace where they fed kids
raw meat and beat them with sticks.
Sloan blew the coach’s whistle and the game began. Sloan’s team ran for the
centre line. On my side, Raj Mandali yelled something in Urdu, probably ‘I have
to go potty!’ and ran for the exit. Corey Bailer tried to crawl behind the wall mat
and hide. The rest of my team did their best to cower in fear and not look like
targets.
‘Tyson,’ I said. ‘Let’s g–’
A ball slammed into my gut. I sat down hard in the middle of the gym floor.
The other team exploded in laughter.
My eyesight was fuzzy. I felt like I’d just got the Heimlich manoeuvre from a
gorilla. I couldn’t believe anybody could throw that hard.
Tyson yelled, ‘Percy, duck!’
I rolled as another dodgeball whistled past my ear at the speed of sound.
Whooom!
It hit the wall mat, and Corey Bailer yelped.
‘Hey!’ I yelled at Sloan’s team. ‘You could kill somebody!’
The visitor named Joe Bob grinned at me evilly. Somehow, he looked a lot
bigger now … even taller than Tyson. His biceps bulged beneath his T-shirt. ‘I
hope so, Perseus Jackson! I hope so!’
The way he said my name sent a chill down my back. Nobody called me
Perseus except those who knew my true identity. Friends … and enemies.
What had Tyson said? They smell funny.
Monsters.
All around Matt Sloan, the visitors were growing in size. They were no longer
kids. They were two-and-a-half-metre-tall giants with wild eyes, pointy teeth and
hairy arms tattooed with snakes and hula women and Valentine hearts.
Matt Sloan dropped his ball. ‘Whoa! You’re not from Detroit! Who…’
The other kids on his team started screaming and backing towards the exit, but
the giant named Marrow Sucker threw a ball with deadly accuracy. It streaked
past Raj Mandali just as he was about to leave and hit the door, slamming it shut
like magic. Raj and some of the other kids banged on it desperately but it
wouldn’t budge.
‘Let them go!’ I yelled at the giants.
The one called Joe Bob growled at me. He had a tattoo on his biceps that said:
JB luvs Babycakes. ‘And lose our tasty morsels? No, Son of the Sea God. We
Laistrygonians aren’t just playing for your death. We want lunch!’
He waved his hand and a new batch of dodgeballs appeared on the centre line
– but these balls weren’t made of red rubber. They were bronze, the size of
cannon balls, perforated like Wiffle balls with fire bubbling out the holes. They
must’ve been searing hot, but the giants picked them up with their bare hands.
‘Coach!’ I yelled.
Nunley looked up sleepily, but if he saw anything abnormal about the
dodgeball game, he didn’t let on. That’s the problem with mortals. A magical
force called the Mist obscures the true appearance of monsters and gods from
their vision, so mortals tend to see only what they can understand. Maybe the
coach saw a few eighth graders pounding the younger kids like usual. Maybe the
other kids saw Matt Sloan’s thugs getting ready to toss Molotov cocktails
around. (It wouldn’t have been the first time.) At any rate, I was pretty sure
nobody else realized we were dealing with genuine man-eating bloodthirsty
monsters.
‘Yeah. Mm-hmm,’ Coach muttered. ‘Play nice.’
And he went back to his magazine.
The giant named Skull Eater threw his ball. I dived aside as the fiery bronze
comet sailed past my shoulder.
‘Corey!’ I screamed.
Tyson pulled him out from behind the exercise mat just as the ball exploded
against it, blasting the mat to smoking shreds.
‘Run!’ I told my teammates. ‘The other exit!’
They ran for the locker room, but with another wave of Joe Bob’s hand, that
door also slammed shut.
‘No one leaves unless you’re out!’ Joe Bob roared. ‘And you’re not out until
we eat you!’
He launched his own fireball. My teammates scattered as it blasted a crater in
the gym floor.
I reached for Riptide, which I always kept in my pocket, but then I realized I
was wearing gym shorts. I had no pockets. Riptide was tucked in my jeans inside
my gym locker. And the locker room door was sealed. I was completely
defenceless.
Another fireball came streaking towards me. Tyson pushed me out of the way,
but the explosion still blew me head over heels. I found myself sprawled on the
gym floor, dazed from smoke, my tie-dyed T-shirt peppered with sizzling holes.
Just across the centre line, two hungry giants were glaring down at me.
‘Flesh!’ they bellowed. ‘Hero flesh for lunch!’ They both took aim.
‘Percy needs help!’ Tyson yelled, and he jumped in front of me just as they
threw their balls.
‘Tyson!’ I screamed, but it was too late.
Both balls slammed into him … but no … he’d caught them. Somehow Tyson,
who was so clumsy he knocked over lab equipment and broke playground
structures on a regular basis, had caught two fiery metal balls speeding towards
him at a zillion miles an hour. He sent them hurtling back towards their surprised
owners, who screamed, ‘BAAAAAD!’ as the bronze spheres exploded against
their chests.
The giants disintegrated in twin columns of flame – a sure sign they were
monsters, all right. Monsters don’t die. They just dissipate into smoke and dust,
which saves heroes a lot of trouble cleaning up after a fight.
‘My brothers!’ Joe Bob the Cannibal wailed. He flexed his muscles and his
Babycakes tattoo rippled. ‘You will pay for their destruction!’
‘Tyson!’ I said. ‘Look out!’
Another comet hurtled towards us. Tyson just had time to swat it aside. It flew
straight over Coach Nunley’s head and landed in the stands with a huge KABOOM!
Kids were running around screaming, trying to avoid the sizzling craters in the
floor. Others were banging on the door, calling for help. Sloan himself stood
petrified in the middle of the court, watching in disbelief as balls of death flew
around him.
Coach Nunley still wasn’t seeing anything. He tapped his hearing aid like the
explosions were giving him interference, but he kept his eyes on his magazine.
Surely the whole school could hear the noise. The headmaster, the police,
somebody would come help us.
‘Victory will be ours!’ roared Joe Bob the Cannibal. ‘We will feast on your
bones!’
I wanted to tell him he was taking the dodgeball game way too seriously, but
before I could, he hefted another ball. The other three giants followed his lead.
I knew we were dead. Tyson couldn’t deflect all those balls at once. His hands
had to be seriously burned from blocking the first volley. Without my sword …
I had a crazy idea.
I ran towards the locker room.
‘Move!’ I told my teammates. ‘Away from the door.’
Explosions behind me. Tyson had batted two of the balls back towards their
owners and blasted them to ashes.
That left two giants still standing.
A third ball hurtled straight at me. I forced myself to wait – one Mississippi,
two Mississippi – then dived aside as the fiery sphere demolished the locker
room door.
Now, I figured that the built-up gas in most boys’ locker rooms was enough to
cause an explosion, so I wasn’t surprised when the flaming dodgeball ignited a
huge WHOOOOOOOM!
The wall blew apart. Locker doors, socks, athletic supports and other various
nasty personal belongings rained all over the gym.
I turned just in time to see Tyson punch Skull Eater in the face. The giant
crumpled. But the last giant, Joe Bob, had wisely held on to his own ball,
waiting for an opportunity. He threw just as Tyson was turning to face him.
‘No!’ I yelled.
The ball caught Tyson square in the chest. He slid the length of the court and
slammed into the back wall, which cracked and partially crumbled on top of
him, making a hole right onto Church Street. I didn’t see how Tyson could still
be alive, but he only looked dazed. The bronze ball was smoking at his feet.
Tyson tried to pick it up, but he fell back, stunned, into a pile of cinder blocks.
‘Well!’ Joe Bob gloated. ‘I’m the last one standing! I’ll have enough meat to
bring Babycakes a doggy bag!’
He picked up another ball and aimed it at Tyson.
‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘It’s me you want!’
The giant grinned. ‘You wish to die first, young hero?’
I had to do something. Riptide had to be around here somewhere.
Then I spotted my jeans in a smoking heap of clothes right by the giant’s feet.
If I could only get there … I knew it was hopeless, but I charged.
The giant laughed. ‘My lunch approaches.’ He raised his arm to throw. I
braced myself to die.
Suddenly the giant’s body went rigid. His expression changed from gloating to
surprise. Right where his belly button should’ve been, his T-shirt ripped open
and he grew something like a horn – no, not a horn – the glowing tip of a blade.
The ball dropped out of his hand. The monster stared down at the knife that
had just run him through from behind.
He muttered, ‘Ow,’ and burst into a cloud of green flame, which I figured was
going to make Babycakes pretty upset.
Standing in the smoke was my friend Annabeth. Her face was grimy and
scratched. She had a ragged backpack slung over her shoulder, her baseball cap
tucked in her pocket, a bronze knife in her hand, and a wild look in her stormgrey eyes, like she’d just been chased a thousand miles by ghosts.
Matt Sloan, who’d been standing there dumbfounded the whole time, finally
came to his senses. He blinked at Annabeth, as if he dimly recognized her from
my notebook picture. ‘That’s the girl … That’s the girl –’
Annabeth punched him in the nose and knocked him flat. ‘And you’, she told
him, ‘lay off my friend.’
The gym was in flames. Kids were still running around screaming. I heard
sirens wailing and a garbled voice over the intercom. Through the glass windows
of the exit doors, I could see the headmaster, Mr Bonsai, wrestling with the lock,
a crowd of teachers piling up behind him.
‘Annabeth…’ I stammered. ‘How did you … how long have you…’
‘Pretty much all morning.’ She sheathed her bronze knife. ‘I’ve been trying to
find a good time to talk to you, but you were never alone.’
‘The shadow I saw this morning – that was –’ My face felt hot. ‘Oh my gods,
you were looking in my bedroom window?’
‘There’s no time to explain!’ she snapped, though she looked a little red-faced
herself. ‘I just didn’t want to –’
‘There!’ a woman screamed. The doors burst open and the adults came
pouring in.
‘Meet me outside,’ Annabeth told me. ‘And him.’ She pointed to Tyson, who
was still sitting dazed against the wall. Annabeth gave him a look of distaste that
I didn’t quite understand. ‘You’d better bring him.’
‘What?’
‘No time!’ she said. ‘Hurry!’
She put on her Yankees baseball cap, which was a magic gift from her mom,
and instantly vanished.
That left me standing alone in the middle of the burning gymnasium when the
headmaster came charging in with half the faculty and a couple of police
officers.
‘Percy Jackson?’ Mr Bonsai said. ‘What … how…’
Over by the broken wall, Tyson groaned and stood up from the pile of cinder
blocks. ‘Head hurts.’
Matt Sloan was coming around, too. He focused on me with a look of terror.
‘Percy did it, Mr Bonsai! He set the whole building on fire. Coach Nunley will
tell you! He saw it all!’
Coach Nunley had been dutifully reading his magazine, but just my luck – he
chose that moment to look up when Sloan said his name. ‘Eh? Yeah. Mm-hmm.’
The other adults turned towards me. I knew they would never believe me,
even if I could tell them the truth.
I grabbed Riptide out of my ruined jeans, told Tyson, ‘Come on!’ and jumped
through the gaping hole in the side of the building.
3
We Hail the Taxi of Eternal Torment
Annabeth was waiting for us in an alley down Church Street. She pulled Tyson
and me off the sidewalk just as a fire truck screamed past, heading for
Meriwether Prep.
‘Where’d you find him?’ she demanded, pointing at Tyson.
Now, under different circumstances, I would’ve been really happy to see her.
We’d made our peace last summer, despite the fact that her mom was Athena and
didn’t get along with my dad. I’d missed Annabeth probably more than I wanted
to admit.
But I’d just been attacked by cannibal giants, Tyson had saved my life three or
four times, and all Annabeth could do was glare at him like he was the problem.
‘He’s my friend,’ I told her.
‘Is he homeless?’
‘What does that have to do with anything? He can hear you, you know. Why
don’t you ask him?’
She looked surprised. ‘He can talk?’
‘I talk,’ Tyson admitted. ‘You are pretty.’
‘Ah! Gross!’ Annabeth stepped away from him.
I couldn’t believe she was being so rude. I examined Tyson’s hands, which I
was sure must’ve been badly scorched by the flaming dodgeballs, but they
looked fine – grimy and scarred, with dirty fingernails the size of potato chips –
but they always looked like that. ‘Tyson,’ I said in disbelief. ‘Your hands aren’t
even burned.’
‘Of course not,’ Annabeth muttered. ‘I’m surprised the Laistrygonians had the
guts to attack you with him around.’
Tyson seemed fascinated by Annabeth’s blonde hair. He tried to touch it, but
she smacked his hand away.
‘Annabeth,’ I said, ‘what are you talking about? Laistry-what?’
‘Laistrygonians. The monsters in the gym. They’re a race of giant cannibals
who live in the far north. Odysseus ran into them once, but I’ve never seen them
as far south as New York before.’
‘Laistry – I can’t even say that. What would you call them in English?’
She thought about it for a moment. ‘Canadians,’ she decided. ‘Now come on,
we have to get out of here.’
‘The police’ll be after me.’
‘That’s the least of our problems,’ she said. ‘Have you been having the
dreams?’
‘The dreams … about Grover?’
Her face turned pale. ‘Grover? No, what about Grover?’
I told her my dream. ‘Why? What were you dreaming about?’
Her eyes looked stormy, like her mind was racing a million miles an hour.
‘Camp,’ she said at last. ‘Big trouble at camp.’
‘My mom was saying the same thing! But what kind of trouble?’
‘I don’t know exactly. Something’s wrong. We have to get there right away.
Monsters have been chasing me all the way from Virginia, trying to stop me.
Have you had a lot of attacks?’
I shook my head. ‘None all year … until today.’
‘None? But how…’ Her eyes drifted to Tyson. ‘Oh.’
‘What do mean, “oh”?’
Tyson raised his hand like he was still in class. ‘Canadians in the gym called
Percy something … Son of the Sea God?’
Annabeth and I exchanged looks.
I didn’t know how I could explain, but I figured Tyson deserved the truth after
almost getting killed.
‘Big guy,’ I said, ‘you ever hear those old stories about the Greek gods? Like
Zeus, Poseidon, Athena –’
‘Yes,’ Tyson said.
‘Well … those gods are still alive. They kind of follow Western Civilization
around, living in the strongest countries, so like now they’re in the U.S. And
sometimes they have kids with mortals. Kids called half-bloods.’
‘Yes,’ Tyson said, like he was still waiting for me to get to the point.
‘Uh, well, Annabeth and I are half-bloods,’ I said. ‘We’re like … heroes-intraining. And whenever monsters pick up our scent, they attack us. That’s what
those giants were in the gym. Monsters.’
‘Yes.’
I stared at him. He didn’t seem surprised or confused by what I was telling
him, which surprised and confused me. ‘So … you believe me?’
Tyson nodded. ‘But you are … Son of the Sea God?’
‘Yeah,’ I admitted. ‘My dad is Poseidon.’
Tyson frowned. Now he looked confused. ‘But then…’
A siren wailed. A police car raced past our alley.
‘We don’t have time for this,’ Annabeth said. ‘We’ll talk in the taxi.’
‘A taxi all the way to camp?’ I said. ‘You know how much money –’
‘Trust me.’
I hesitated. ‘What about Tyson?’
I imagined escorting my giant friend into Camp Half-Blood. If he freaked out
on a regular playground with regular bullies, how would he act at a training
camp for demigods? On the other hand, the cops would be looking for us.
‘We can’t just leave him,’ I decided. ‘He’ll be in trouble, too.’
‘Yeah.’ Annabeth looked grim. ‘We definitely need to take him. Now come
on.’
I didn’t like the way she said that, as if Tyson were a big disease we needed to
get to the hospital, but I followed her down the alley. Together the three of us
sneaked through the side streets of downtown while a huge column of smoke
billowed up behind us from my school gymnasium.
‘Here.’ Annabeth stopped us on the corner of Thomas and Trimble. She fished
around in her backpack. ‘I hope I have one left.’
She looked even worse than I’d realized at first. Her chin was cut. Twigs and
grass were tangled in her ponytail, as if she’d slept several nights in the open.
The slashes on the hems of her jeans looked suspiciously like claw marks.
‘What are you looking for?’ I asked.
All around us, sirens wailed. I figured it wouldn’t be long before more cops
cruised by, looking for juvenile delinquent gym-bombers. No doubt Matt Sloan
had given them a statement by now. He’d probably twisted the story around so
that Tyson and I were the bloodthirsty cannibals.
‘Found one. Thank the gods.’ Annabeth pulled out a gold coin that I
recognized as a drachma, the currency of Mount Olympus. It had Zeus’s likeness
stamped on one side and the Empire State Building on the other.
‘Annabeth,’ I said, ‘New York taxi drivers won’t take that.’
‘Anakoche’ she shouted in Ancient Greek. ‘Harma epitribeios!’
As usual, the moment she spoke in the language of Olympus, I somehow
understood it. She’d said, Stop, Chariot of Damnation!
That didn’t exactly make me feel real excited about whatever her plan was.
She threw her coin into the street, but instead of clattering on the tarmac, the
drachma sank right through and disappeared.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then, just where the coin had fallen, the tarmac darkened. It melted into a
rectangular pool about the size of a parking space – bubbling red liquid like
blood. Then a car erupted from the ooze.
It was a taxi, all right, but, unlike every other taxi in New York, it wasn’t
yellow. It was smoky grey. I mean it looked like it was woven out of smoke, like
you could walk right through it. There were words printed on the door –
something like GYAR SSIRES – but my dyslexia made it hard for me to
decipher what it said.
The passenger window rolled down, and an old woman stuck her head out.
She had a mop of grizzled hair covering her eyes, and she spoke in a weird
mumbling way, like she’d just had a shot of Novocain. ‘Passage? Passage?’
‘Three to Camp Half-Blood,’ Annabeth said. She opened the cab’s back door
and waved at me to get in, like this was all completely normal.
‘Ach!’ the old woman screeched. ‘We don’t take his kind!’
She pointed a bony finger at Tyson.
What was it? Pick-on-Big-and-Ugly-Kids Day?
‘Extra pay,’ Annabeth promised. ‘Three more drachmas on arrival.’
‘Done!’ the woman screamed.
Reluctantly I got in the cab. Tyson squeezed in the middle. Annabeth crawled
in last.
The interior was also smoky grey, but it felt solid enough. The seat was
cracked and lumpy – no different than most taxis. There was no Plexiglas screen
separating us from the old lady driving … Wait a minute. There wasn’t just one
old lady. There were three, all crammed in the front seat, each with stringy hair
covering her eyes, bony hands and a charcoal-coloured sackcloth dress.
The one driving said, ‘Long Island! Out-of-metro fare bonus! Ha!’
She floored the accelerator, and my head slammed against the backrest. A prerecorded voice came on over the speaker: Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to
Zeus, and when I’m out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle
up!
I looked down and found a large black chain instead of a seat belt. I decided I
wasn’t that desperate … yet.
The cab sped around the corner of West Broadway, and the grey lady sitting in
the middle screeched, ‘Look out! Go left!’
‘Well, if you’d give me the eye, Tempest, I could see that!’ the driver
complained.
Wait a minute. Give her the eye?
I didn’t have time to ask questions because the driver swerved to avoid an
oncoming delivery truck, ran over the kerb with a jaw-rattling thump, and flew
into the next block.
‘Wasp!’ the third lady said to the driver. ‘Give me the girl’s coin! I want to
bite it.’
‘You bit it last time, Anger!’ said the driver, whose name must’ve been Wasp.
‘It’s my turn!’
‘Is not!’ yelled the one called Anger.
The middle one, Tempest, screamed, ‘Red light!’
‘Brake!’ yelled Anger.
Instead, Wasp floored the accelerator and rode up on the kerb, screeching
around another corner, and knocking over a newspaper box. She left my stomach
somewhere back on Broome Street.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘But … can you see?’
‘No!’ screamed Wasp from behind the wheel.
‘No!’ screamed Tempest from the middle.
‘Of course!’ screamed Anger by the shotgun window.
I looked at Annabeth. ‘They’re blind?’
‘Not completely,’ Annabeth said. ‘They have an eye.’
‘One eye?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Each?’
‘No. One eye total.’
Next to me, Tyson groaned and grabbed the seat. ‘Not feeling so good.’
‘Oh, man,’ I said, because I’d seen Tyson get carsick on school field trips and
it was not something you wanted to be within fifteen metres of. ‘Hang in there,
big guy. Anybody got a garbage bag or something?’
The three grey ladies were too busy squabbling to pay me any attention. I
looked over at Annabeth, who was hanging on for dear life, and I gave her a
why-did-you-do-this-to-me look.
‘Hey,’ she said, ‘Grey Sisters Taxi is the fastest way to camp.’
‘Then why didn’t you take it from Virginia?’
‘That’s outside their service area,’ she said, like that should be obvious. ‘They
only serve Greater New York and surrounding communities.’
‘We’ve had famous people in this cab!’ Anger exclaimed. ‘Jason! You
remember him?’
‘Don’t remind me!’ Wasp wailed. ‘And we didn’t have a cab back then, you
old bat. That was three thousand years ago!’
‘Give me the tooth!’ Anger tried to grab at Wasp’s mouth, but Wasp swatted
her hand away.
‘Only if Tempest gives me the eye!’
‘No!’ Tempest screeched. ‘You had it yesterday!’
‘But I’m driving, you old hag!’
‘Excuses! Turn! That was your turn!’
Wasp swerved hard onto Delancey Street, squishing me between Tyson and
the door. She punched the gas and we shot up the Williamsburg Bridge at
seventy miles an hour.
The three sisters were fighting for real now, slapping each other as Anger tried
to grab at Wasp’s face and Wasp tried to grab at Tempest’s. With their hair flying
and their mouths open, screaming at each other, I realized that none of the sisters
had any teeth except for Wasp, who had one mossy yellow incisor. Instead of
eyes, they just had closed, sunken eyelids, except for Anger, who had one
bloodshot green eye that stared at everything hungrily, as if it couldn’t get
enough of anything it saw.
Finally Anger, who had the advantage of sight, managed to yank the tooth out
of her sister Wasp’s mouth. This made Wasp so mad she swerved towards the
edge of the Williamsburg Bridge, yelling, ‘’Ivit back! ’Ivit back!’
Tyson groaned and clutched his stomach.
‘Uh, if anybody’s interested,’ I said, ‘we’re going to die!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Annabeth told me, sounding pretty worried. ‘The Grey Sisters
know what they’re doing. They’re really very wise.’
This coming from the daughter of Athena, but I wasn’t exactly reassured. We
were skimming along the edge of a bridge forty metres above the East River.
‘Yes, wise!’ Anger grinned in the rear-view mirror, showing off her newly
acquired tooth. ‘We know things!’
‘Every street in Manhattan!’ Wasp bragged, still hitting her sister. ‘The capital
of Nepal!’
‘The location you seek!’ Tempest added.
Immediately her sisters pummelled her from either side, screaming, ‘Be quiet!
Be quiet! He didn’t even ask yet!’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What location? I’m not seeking any –’
‘Nothing!’ Tempest said. ‘You’re right, boy. It’s nothing!’
‘Tell me.’
‘No!’ they all screamed.
‘The last time we told, it was horrible!’ Tempest said.
‘Eye tossed in a lake!’ Anger agreed.
‘Years to find it again!’ Wasp moaned. ‘And speaking of that – give it back!’
‘No!’ yelled Anger.
‘Eye!’ Wasp yelled. ‘Gimme!’
She whacked her sister Anger on the back. There was a sickening pop and
something flew out of Anger’s face. Anger fumbled for it, trying to catch it, but
she only managed to bat it with the back of her hand. The slimy green orb sailed
over her shoulder, into the back seat, and straight into my lap.
I jumped so hard, my head hit the ceiling and the eyeball rolled away.
‘I can’t see!’ all three sisters yelled.
‘Give me the eye!’ Wasp wailed.
‘Give her the eye!’ Annabeth screamed.
‘I don’t have it!’ I said.
‘There, by your foot,’ Annabeth said. ‘Don’t step on it! Get it!’
‘I’m not picking that up!’
The taxi slammed against the guardrail and skidded along with a horrible
grinding noise. The whole car shuddered, billowing grey smoke as if it were
about to dissolve from the strain.
‘Going to be sick!’ Tyson warned.
‘Annabeth,’ I yelled, ‘let Tyson use your backpack!’
‘Are you crazy? Get the eye!’
Wasp yanked the wheel, and the taxi swerved away from the rail. We hurtled
down the bridge towards Brooklyn, going faster than any human taxi. The Grey
Sisters screeched and pummelled each other and cried out for their eye.
At last I steeled my nerves. I ripped off a chunk of my tie-dyed T-shirt, which
was already falling apart from all the burn marks, and used it to pick the eyeball
off the floor.
‘Nice boy!’ Anger cried, as if she somehow knew I had her missing peeper.
‘Give it back!’
‘Not until you explain,’ I told her. ‘What were you talking about, the location I
seek?’
‘No time!’ Tempest cried. ‘Accelerating!’
I looked out the window. Sure enough, trees and cars and whole
neighbourhoods were now zipping by in a grey blur. We were already out of
Brooklyn, heading through the middle of Long Island.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth warned, ‘they can’t find our destination without the eye.
We’ll just keep accelerating until we break into a million pieces.’
‘First they have to tell me,’ I said. ‘Or I’ll open the window and throw the eye
into oncoming traffic.’
‘No!’ the Grey Sisters wailed. ‘Too dangerous!’
‘I’m rolling down the window.’
‘Wait!’ the Grey Sisters screamed. ‘Thirty, thirty-one, seventy-five, twelve!’
They belted it out like a quarterback calling a play.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘That makes no sense!’
‘Thirty, thirty-one, seventy-five, twelve!’ Anger wailed. ‘That’s all we can tell
you. Now give us the eye! Almost to camp!’
We were off the highway now, zipping through the countryside of northern
Long Island. I could see Half-Blood Hill ahead of us, with its giant pine tree at
the crest – Thalia’s tree, which contained the life force of a fallen hero.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth said more urgently. ‘Give them the eye now!’
I decided not to argue. I threw the eye into Wasp’s lap.
The old lady snatched it up, pushed it into her eye socket like somebody
putting in a contact lens, and blinked. ‘Whoa!’
She slammed on the brakes. The taxi spun four or five times in a cloud of
smoke and squealed to a halt in the middle of the farm road at the base of HalfBlood Hill.
Tyson let loose a huge belch. ‘Better now.’
‘All right,’ I told the Grey Sisters. ‘Now tell me what those numbers mean.’
‘No time!’ Annabeth opened her door. ‘We have to get out now.’
I was about to ask why, when I looked up at Half-Blood Hill and understood.
At the crest of the hill was a group of campers. And they were under attack.
4
Tyson Plays with Fire
Mythologically speaking, if there’s anything I hate worse than trios of old ladies,
it’s bulls. Last summer, I fought the Minotaur on top of Half-Blood Hill. This
time what I saw up there was even worse: two bulls. And not just regular bulls –
bronze ones the size of elephants. And even that wasn’t bad enough. Naturally
they had to breathe fire, too.
As soon as we exited the taxi, the Grey Sisters peeled out, heading back to
New York, where life was safer. They didn’t even wait for their extra threedrachma payment. They just left us on the side of the road, Annabeth with
nothing but her backpack and knife, Tyson and me still in our burned-up tie-dyed
gym clothes.
‘Oh, man,’ said Annabeth, looking at the battle raging on the hill.
What worried me most weren’t the bulls themselves. Or the ten heroes in full
battle armour who were getting their bronze-plated booties whooped. What
worried me was that the bulls were ranging all over the hill, even around the
back side of the pine tree. That shouldn’t have been possible. The camp’s magic
boundaries didn’t allow monsters to cross past Thalia’s tree. But the metal bulls
were doing it anyway.
One of the heroes shouted, ‘Border patrol, to me!’ A girl’s voice – gruff and
familiar.
Border patrol? I thought. The camp didn’t have a border patrol.
‘It’s Clarisse,’ Annabeth said. ‘Come on, we have to help her.’
Normally, rushing to Clarisse’s aid would not have been high on my ‘to do’
list. She was one of the biggest bullies at camp. The first time we’d met she tried
to introduce my head to a toilet. She was also a daughter of Ares, and I’d had a
very serious disagreement with her father last summer, so now the god of war
and all his children basically hated my guts.
Still, she was in trouble. Her fellow warriors were scattering, running in panic
as the bulls charged. The grass was burning in huge swathes around the pine
tree. One hero screamed and waved his arms as he ran in circles, the horsehair
plume on his helmet blazing like a fiery Mohawk. Clarisse’s own armour was
charred. She was fighting with a broken spear shaft, the other end embedded
uselessly in the metal joint of one bull’s shoulder.
I uncapped my ballpoint pen. It shimmered, growing longer and heavier until I
held the bronze sword Anaklusmos in my hands. ‘Tyson, stay here. I don’t want
you taking any more chances.’
‘No!’ Annabeth said. ‘We need him.’
I stared at her. ‘He’s mortal. He got lucky with the dodgeballs but he can’t –’
‘Percy, do you know what those are up there? The Colchis bulls, made by
Hephaestus himself. We can’t fight them without Medea’s Sunscreen SPF
50,000. We’ll get burned to a crisp.’
‘Medea’s what?’
Annabeth rummaged through her backpack and cursed. ‘I had a jar of tropical
coconut scent sitting on my nightstand at home. Why didn’t I bring it?’
I’d learned a long time ago not to question Annabeth too much. It just made
me more confused. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I’m not
going to let Tyson get fried.’
‘Percy –’
‘Tyson, stay back.’ I raised my sword. ‘I’m going in.’
Tyson tried to protest, but I was already running up the hill towards Clarisse,
who was yelling at her patrol, trying to get them into phalanx formation. It was a
good idea. The few who were listening lined up shoulder to shoulder, locking
their shields to form an ox-hide-and-bronze wall, their spears bristling over the
top like porcupine quills.
Unfortunately, Clarisse could only muster six campers. The other four were
still running around with their helmets on fire. Annabeth ran towards them,
trying to help. She taunted one of the bulls into chasing her, then turned
invisible, completely confusing the monster. The other bull charged Clarisse’s
line.
I was halfway up the hill – not close enough to help. Clarisse hadn’t even seen
me yet.
The bull moved deadly fast for something so big. Its metal hide gleamed in
the sun. It had fist-sized rubies for eyes and horns of polished silver. When it
opened its hinged mouth, a column of white-hot flame blasted out.
‘Hold the line!’ Clarisse ordered her warriors.
Whatever else you could say about Clarisse, she was brave. She was a big girl
with cruel eyes like her father’s. She looked like she was born to wear Greek
battle armour, but I didn’t see how even she could stand against that bull’s
charge.
Unfortunately, at that moment, the other bull lost interest in finding Annabeth.
It turned, wheeling around behind Clarisse on her unprotected side.
‘Behind you!’ I yelled. ‘Look out!’
I shouldn’t have said anything, because all I did was startle her. Bull Number
One crashed into her shield, and the phalanx broke. Clarisse went flying
backwards and landed in a smouldering patch of grass. The bull charged past
her, but not before blasting the other heroes with its fiery breath. Their shields
melted right off their arms. They dropped their weapons and ran as Bull Number
Two closed in on Clarisse for the kill.
I lunged forward and grabbed Clarisse by the straps of her armour. I dragged
her out of the way just as Bull Number Two freight-trained past. I gave it a good
swipe with Riptide and cut a huge gash in its flank, but the monster just creaked
and groaned and kept on going.
It hadn’t touched me, but I could feel the heat of its metal skin. Its body
temperature could’ve microwaved a frozen burrito.
‘Let me go!’ Clarisse pummelled my hand. ‘Percy, curse you!’
I dropped her in a heap next to the pine tree and turned to face the bulls. We
were on the inside slope of the hill now, the valley of Camp Half-Blood directly
below us – the cabins, the training facilities, the Big House – all of it at risk if
these bulls got past us.
Annabeth shouted orders to the other heroes, telling them to spread out and
keep the bulls distracted.
Bull Number One ran a wide arc, making its way back towards me. As it
passed the middle of the hill, where the invisible boundary line should’ve kept it
out, it slowed down a little, as if it were struggling against a strong wind; but
then it broke through and kept coming. Bull Number Two turned to face me, fire
sputtering from the gash I’d cut in its side. I couldn’t tell if it felt any pain, but
its ruby eyes seemed to glare at me like I’d just made things personal.
I couldn’t fight both bulls at the same time. I’d have to take down Bull
Number Two first, cut its head off before Bull Number One charged back into
range. My arms already felt tired. I realized how long it had been since I’d
worked out with Riptide, how out of practice I was.
I lunged but Bull Number Two blew flames at me. I rolled aside as the air
turned to pure heat. All the oxygen was sucked out of my lungs. My foot caught
on something – a tree root, maybe – and pain shot up my ankle. Still, I managed
to slash with my sword and lop off part of the monster’s snout. It galloped away,
wild and disoriented. But before I could feel too good about that, I tried to stand,
and my left leg buckled underneath me. My ankle was sprained, maybe broken.
Bull Number One charged straight towards me. No way could I crawl out of
its path.
Annabeth shouted, ‘Tyson, help him!’
Somewhere near, towards the crest of the hill, Tyson wailed, ‘Can’t – get –
through!’
‘I, Annabeth Chase, give you permission to enter camp!’
Thunder shook the hillside. Suddenly Tyson was there, barrelling towards me,
yelling, ‘Percy needs help!’
Before I could tell him no, he dived between me and the bull just as it
unleashed a nuclear firestorm.
‘Tyson!’ I yelled.
The blast swirled around him like a red tornado. I could only see the black
silhouette of his body. I knew with horrible certainty that my friend had just been
turned into a column of ashes.
But when the fire died, Tyson was still standing there, completely unharmed.
Not even his grungy clothes were scorched. The bull must’ve been as surprised
as I was, because before it could unleash a second blast, Tyson balled his fists
and slammed them into the bull’s face. ‘BAD COW!’
His fists made a crater where the bronze bull’s snout used to be. Two small
columns of flame shot out of its ears. Tyson hit it again, and the bronze crumpled
under his hands like aluminium foil. The bull’s face now looked like a sock
puppet pulled inside out.
‘Down!’ Tyson yelled.
The bull staggered and fell on its back. Its legs moved feebly in the air, steam
coming out of its ruined head in odd places.
Annabeth ran over to check on me.
My ankle felt like it was filled with acid, but she gave me some Olympian
nectar to drink from her canteen, and I immediately started to feel better. There
was a burning smell that I later learned was me. The hair on my arms had been
completely singed off.
‘The other bull?’ I asked.
Annabeth pointed down the hill. Clarisse had taken care of Bad Cow Number
Two. She’d impaled it through the back leg with a celestial bronze spear. Now,
with its snout half gone and a huge gash in its side, it was trying to run in slow
motion, going in circles like some kind of merry-go-round animal.
Clarisse pulled off her helmet and marched towards us. A strand of her stringy
brown hair was smouldering, but she didn’t seem to notice. ‘You – ruin –
everything!’ she yelled at me. ‘I had it under control!’
I was too stunned to answer. Annabeth grumbled, ‘Good to see you too,
Clarisse.’
Argh!’ Clarisse screamed. ‘Don’t ever, EVER try saving me again!’
‘Clarisse,’ Annabeth said, ‘you’ve got wounded campers.’
That sobered her up. Even Clarisse cared about the soldiers under her
command.
‘I’ll be back,’ she growled, then trudged off to assess the damage.
I stared at Tyson. ‘You didn’t die.’
Tyson looked down like he was embarrassed. ‘I am sorry. Came to help.
Disobeyed you.’
‘My fault,’ Annabeth said. ‘I had no choice. I had to let Tyson cross the
boundary line to save you. Otherwise, you would’ve died.’
‘Let him cross the boundary line?” I asked. ‘But –’
‘Percy,’ she said, ‘have you ever looked at Tyson closely? I mean … in the
face. Ignore the Mist, and really look at him.’
The Mist makes humans see only what their brains can process … I knew it
could fool demigods, too, but …
I looked Tyson in the face. It wasn’t easy. I’d always had trouble looking
directly at him, though I’d never quite understood why. I’d thought it was just
because he always had peanut butter in his crooked teeth. I forced myself to
focus at his big lumpy nose, then a little higher at his eyes.
No, not eyes.
One eye. One large, calf-brown eye, right in the middle of his forehead, with
thick lashes and big tears trickling down his cheeks on either side.
‘Tyson,’ I stammered. ‘You’re a…’
‘Cyclops,’ Annabeth offered. ‘A baby, by the looks of him. Probably why he
couldn’t get past the boundary line as easily as the bulls. Tyson’s one of the
homeless orphans.’
‘One of the what?’
‘They’re in almost all the big cities,’ Annabeth said distastefully. ‘They’re …
mistakes, Percy. Children of nature spirits and gods … Well, one god in
particular, usually … and they don’t always come out right. No one wants them.
They get tossed aside. They grow up wild on the streets. I don’t know how this
one found you, but he obviously likes you. We should take him to Chiron, let
him decide what to do.’
‘But the fire. How –’
‘He’s a Cyclops.’ Annabeth paused, as if she were remembering something
unpleasant. ‘They work the forges of the gods. They have to be immune to fire.
That’s what I was trying to tell you.’
I was completely shocked. How had I never realized what Tyson was?
But I didn’t have much time to think about it just then. The whole side of the
hill was burning. Wounded heroes needed attention. And there were still two
banged-up bronze bulls to dispose of, which I didn’t figure would fit in our
normal recycling bins.
Clarisse came back over and wiped the soot off her forehead. ‘Jackson, if you
can stand, get up. We need to carry the wounded back to the Big House, let
Tantalus know what’s happened.’
‘Tantalus?’ I asked.
‘The activities director,’ Clarisse said impatiently.
‘Chiron is the activities director. And where’s Argus? He’s head of security.
He should be here.’
Clarisse made a sour face. ‘Argus got fired. You two have been gone too long.
Things are changing.’
‘But Chiron … He’s trained kids to fight monsters for over three thousand
years. He can’t just be gone. What happened?’
‘That happened,’ Clarisse snapped.
She pointed to Thalia’s tree.
Every camper knew the story behind the tree. Six years ago, Grover, Annabeth
and two other demigods named Thalia and Luke had come to Camp Half-Blood
chased by an army of monsters. When they got cornered on top of this hill,
Thalia, a daughter of Zeus, had made her last stand here to give her friends time
to reach safety. As she was dying, her father Zeus took pity on her and changed
her into a pine tree. Her spirit had reinforced the magic borders of the camp,
protecting it from monsters. The pine had been here ever since, strong and
healthy.
But now, its needles were yellow. A huge pile of dead ones littered the base of
the tree. In the centre of the trunk, a metre from the ground, was a puncture mark
the size of a bullet hole, oozing green sap.
A sliver of ice ran through my chest. Now I understood why the camp was in
danger. The magical borders were failing because Thalia’s tree was dying.
Someone had poisoned it.
5
I Get a New Cabin Mate
Ever come home and found your room messed up? Like some helpful person (hi,
Mom) has tried to ‘clean’ it, and suddenly you can’t find anything? And even if
nothing is missing, you get that creepy feeling like somebody’s been looking
through your private stuff and dusting everything with lemon furniture polish?
That’s kind of the way I felt seeing Camp Half-Blood again.
On the surface, things didn’t look all that different. The Big House was still
there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields
still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered
around the valley – the amphitheatre, the combat arena, the dining pavilion
overlooking Long Island Sound. And nestled between the woods and the creek
were the same cabins – a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing
a different Olympian god.
But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong.
Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counsellors and satyrs were
stockpiling weapons in the tool shed. Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked
nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the
meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like
ugly scars.
Somebody had messed with my favourite place in the world, and I was not …
well, a happy camper.
As we made our way to the Big House, I recognized a lot of kids from last
summer. Nobody stopped to talk. Nobody said, ‘Welcome back.’ Some did
double takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried
on with their duties – running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the
grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school. And believe me, I know.
I’ve been kicked out of a couple.
None of that mattered to Tyson. He was absolutely fascinated by everything
he saw. ‘Whasthat!’ he gasped.
‘The stables for pegasi,’ I said. ‘The winged horses.’
‘Whasthat!’
‘Um … those are the toilets.’
‘Whasthat!’
‘The cabins for the campers. If they don’t know who your Olympian parent is,
they put you in the Hermes cabin – that brown one over there – until you’re
determined. Then, once they know, they put you in your dad or mom’s group.’
He looked at me in awe. ‘You … have a cabin?
‘Number three.’ I pointed to a low grey building made of sea stone.
‘You live with friends in the cabin?’
‘No. No, just me.’ I didn’t feel like explaining. The embarrassing truth: I was
the only one who stayed in that cabin because I wasn’t supposed to be alive. The
‘Big Three’ gods – Zeus, Poseidon and Hades – had made a pact after World War
II not to have any more children with mortals. We were more powerful than
regular half-bloods. We were too unpredictable. When we got mad we tended to
cause problems … like World War II, for instance. The ‘Big Three’ pact had only
been broken twice – once when Zeus sired Thalia, once when Poseidon sired me.
Neither of us should’ve been born.
Thalia had got herself turned into a pine tree when she was twelve. Me …
well, I was doing my best not to follow her example. I had nightmares about
what Poseidon might turn me into if I were ever on the verge of death –
plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp.
When we got to the Big House, we found Chiron in his apartment, listening to
his favourite 1960s lounge music while he packed his saddlebags. I guess I
should mention – Chiron is a centaur. From the waist up he looks like a regular
middle-aged guy with curly brown hair and a scraggly beard. From the waist
down, he’s a white stallion. He can pass for human by compacting his lower half
into a magic wheelchair. In fact, he’d passed himself off as my Latin teacher
during my sixth-grade year. But most of the time, if the ceilings are high enough,
he prefers hanging out in full centaur form.
As soon as we saw him, Tyson froze. ‘Pony!’ he cried in total rapture.
Chiron turned, looking offended. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Annabeth ran up and hugged him. ‘Chiron, what’s happening? You’re not …
leaving?’ Her voice was shaky. Chiron was like a second father to her.
Chiron ruffled her hair and gave her a kindly smile. ‘Hello, child. And Percy,
my goodness. You’ve grown over the year!’
I swallowed. ‘Clarisse said you were … you were…’
‘Fired.’ Chiron’s eyes glinted with dark humour. ‘Ah, well, someone had to
take the blame. Lord Zeus was most upset The tree he’d created from the spirit
of his daughter, poisoned! Mr D had to punish someone.’
‘Besides himself, you mean,’ I growled. Just the thought of the camp director,
Mr D, made me angry.
‘But this is crazy!’ Annabeth cried. ‘Chiron, you couldn’t have had anything
to do with poisoning Thalia’s tree!’
‘Nevertheless,’ Chiron sighed, ‘some in Olympus do not trust me now, under
the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’ I asked.
Chiron’s face darkened. He stuffed a Latin–English dictionary into his
saddlebag while the Frank Sinatra music oozed from his boom box.
Tyson was still staring at Chiron in amazement. He whimpered like he wanted
to pat Chiron’s flank but was afraid to come closer. ‘Pony?’
Chiron sniffed. ‘My dear young Cyclops! I am a centaur.’
‘Chiron,’ I said. ‘What about the tree? What happened?’
He shook his head sadly. ‘The poison used on Thalia’s pine is something from
the Underworld, Percy. Some venom even I have never seen. It must have come
from a monster quite deep in the pits of Tartarus.’
‘Then we know who’s responsible. Kro–’
‘Do not invoke the titan lord’s name, Percy. Especially not here, not now.’
‘But last summer he tried to cause a civil war in Olympus! This has to be his
idea. He’d get Luke to do it, that traitor.’
‘Perhaps,’ Chiron said. ‘But I fear I am being held responsible because I did
not prevent it and I cannot cure it. The tree has only a few weeks of life left
unless…’
‘Unless what?’ Annabeth asked.
‘No,’ Chiron said. ‘A foolish thought. The whole valley is feeling the shock of
the poison. The magical borders are deteriorating. The camp itself is dying. Only
one source of magic would be strong enough to reverse the poison, and it was
lost centuries ago.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘We’ll go find it!’
Chiron closed his saddlebag. He pressed the STOP button on his boom box.
Then he turned and rested his hand on my shoulder, looking me straight in the
eyes. ‘Percy, you must promise me that you will not act rashly. I told your
mother I did not want you to come here at all this summer. It’s much too
dangerous. But now that you are here, stay here. Train hard. Learn to fight. But
do not leave.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I want to do something! I can’t just let the borders fail. The
whole camp will be –’
‘Overrun by monsters,’ Chiron said. ‘Yes, I fear so. But you must not let
yourself be baited into hasty action! This could be a trap of the titan lord.
Remember last summer! He almost took your life.’
It was true, but still, I wanted to help so badly. I also wanted to make Kronos
pay. I mean, you’d think the titan lord would’ve learned his lesson aeons ago
when he was overthrown by the gods. You’d think getting chopped into a million
pieces and cast into the darkest part of the Underworld would give him a subtle
clue that nobody wanted him around. But no. Because he was immortal, he was
still alive down there in Tartarus – suffering in eternal pain, hungering to return
and take revenge on Olympus. He couldn’t act on his own, but he was great at
twisting the minds of mortals and even gods to do his dirty work.
The poisoning had to be his doing. Who else would be so low as to attack
Thalia’s tree, the only thing left of a hero who’d given her life to save her
friends?
Annabeth was trying hard not to cry. Chiron brushed a tear from her cheek.
‘Stay with Percy, child,’ he told her. ‘Keep him safe. The prophecy – remember
it!’
‘I-I will.’
‘Um…’ I said. ‘Would this be the super-dangerous prophecy that has me in it,
but the gods have forbidden you to tell me about?’
Nobody answered.
‘Right,’ I muttered. ‘Just checking.’
‘Chiron…’ Annabeth said. ‘You told me the gods made you immortal only so
long as you were needed to train heroes. If they dismiss you from camp –’
‘Swear you will do your best to keep Percy from danger,’ he insisted. ‘Swear
upon the River Styx.’
‘I-I swear it upon the River Styx,’ Annabeth said.
Thunder rumbled outside.
‘Very well,’ Chiron said. He seemed to relax just a little. ‘Perhaps my name
will be cleared and I shall return. Until then, I go to visit my wild kinsmen in the
Everglades. It’s possible they know of some cure for the poisoned tree that I
have forgotten. In any event, I will stay in exile until this matter is resolved …
one way or another.’
Annabeth stifled a sob. Chiron patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘There, now,
child. I must entrust your safety to Mr D and the new activities director. We must
hope … well, perhaps they won’t destroy the camp quite as quickly as I fear.’
‘Who is this Tantalus guy, anyway?’ I demanded. ‘Where does he get off
taking your job?’
A conch horn blew across the valley. I hadn’t realized how late it was. It was
time for the campers to assemble for dinner.
‘Go,’ Chiron said. ‘You will meet him at the pavilion. I will contact your
mother, Percy, and let her know you’re safe. No doubt she’ll be worried by now.
Just remember my warning! You are in grave danger. Do not think for a moment
that the titan lord has forgotten you!’
With that, he clopped out of the apartment and down the hall, Tyson calling
after him, ‘Pony! Don’t go!’
I realized I’d forgotten to tell Chiron about my dream of Grover. Now it was
too late. The best teacher I’d ever had was gone, maybe for good.
Tyson started bawling almost as bad as Annabeth.
I tried to tell them that things would be okay, but I didn’t believe it.
The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from
their cabins. We stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file
in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she’d talk to us later.
Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin – a dozen boys and
girls with blonde hair and grey eyes like hers. Annabeth wasn’t the oldest, but
she’d been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that
by looking at her camp necklace – one bead for every summer, and Annabeth
had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.
Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a
nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze
bulls didn’t seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her
back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell
her about it.
After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin – six guys led by Charles
Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old African American kid. He had hands the size
of catchers’ mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a
blacksmith’s forge all day. He was nice enough once you got to know him, but
no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles. Most just called him
Beckendorf. Rumour was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal
and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing
birdbath for your grandmother’s garden. Whatever you wanted.
The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came
up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came
a dozen satyrs, who reminded me painfully of Grover.
I’d always had a soft spot for the satyrs. When they were at camp, they had to
do all kinds of odd jobs for Mr D, the director, but their most important work
was out in the real world. They were the camp’s seekers. They went undercover
into schools all over the world, looking for potential half-bloods and escorting
them back to camp. That’s how I’d met Grover. He had been the first one to
recognize I was a demigod.
After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They
were always the biggest cabin. Last summer, it had been led by Luke, the guy
who’d fought with Thalia and Annabeth on top of Half-Blood Hill. For a while,
before Poseidon had claimed me, I’d lodged in the Hermes cabin. Luke had
befriended me … and then he’d tried to kill me.
Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren’t
twins, but they looked so much alike it didn’t matter. I could never remember
which one was older. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair
that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirts
untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes’s kids
had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they
looked at you – like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt. I’d
always thought it was funny that the god of thieves would have kids with the last
name ‘Stoll’, but the only time I mentioned it to Travis and Connor, they both
stared at me blankly like they didn’t get the joke.
As soon as the last campers had filed in, I led Tyson into the middle of the
pavilion. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. ‘Who invited that? somebody at
the Apollo table murmured.
I glared in their direction, but I couldn’t figure out who’d spoken.
From the head table a familiar voice drawled, ‘Well, well, if it isn’t Peter
Johnson. My millennium is complete.’
I gritted my teeth. ‘Percy Jackson … sir.’
Mr D sipped his Diet Coke. ‘Yes. Well, as you young people say these days,
whatever’.
He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts and
tennis shoes with black socks. With his pudgy belly and his blotchy red face, he
looked like a Las Vegas tourist who’d stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind
him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them
to Mr D one at a time.
Mr D’s real name is Dionysus. The god of wine. Zeus appointed him director
of Camp Half-Blood to dry out for a hundred years – a punishment for chasing
some off-limits wood nymph.
Next to him, where Chiron usually sat (or stood, in centaur form), was
someone I’d never seen before – a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange
prisoner’s jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue
shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails and badly cut grey hair, like his last
haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at me; his eyes made me
nervous. He looked … fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the
same time.
‘This boy,’ Dionysus told him, ‘you need to watch. Poseidon’s child, you
know.’
‘Ah!’ the prisoner said. ‘That one.’
His tone made it obvious that he and Dionysus had already discussed me at
length.
‘I am Tantalus,’ the prisoner said, smiling coldly. ‘On special assignment here
until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus
Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble.’
‘Trouble?’ I demanded.
Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table – the front
page of today’s New York Post. There was my yearbook picture from Meriwether
Prep. It was hard for me to make out the headline, but I had a pretty good guess
what it said. Something like: Thirteen-Year-Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium.
‘Yes, trouble,’ Tantalus said with satisfaction. ‘You caused plenty of it last
summer, I understand.’
I was too mad to speak. Like it was my fault the gods had almost got into a
civil war?
A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecued meat in front of
Tantalus. The new activities director licked his lips. He looked at his empty
goblet and said, ‘Root beer. Barq’s special stock. 1967.’
The glass filled itself with foamy soda. Tantalus stretched out his hand
hesitantly, as if he were afraid the goblet was hot.
‘Go on, then, old fellow,’ Dionysus said, a strange sparkle in his eyes.
‘Perhaps now it will work.’
Tantalus grabbed for the glass, but it scooted away before he could touch it. A
few drops of root beer spilled, and Tantalus tried to dab them up with his fingers,
but the drops rolled away like quicksilver before he could touch them. He
growled and turned towards the plate of meat. He picked up a fork and tried to
stab a piece of brisket, but the plate skittered down the table and flew off the
end, straight into the coals of the brazier.
‘Blast!’ Tantalus muttered.
‘Ah, well,’ Dionysus said, his voice dripping with false sympathy. ‘Perhaps a
few more days. Believe me, old chap, working at this camp will be torture
enough. I’m sure your old curse will fade eventually.’
‘Eventually,’ muttered Tantalus, staring at Dionysus’s Diet Coke. ‘Do you
have any idea how dry one’s throat gets after three thousand years?’
‘You’re that spirit from the Fields of Punishment,’ I said. ‘The one who stands
in the lake with the fruit tree hanging over you, but you can’t eat or drink.’
Tantalus sneered at me. ‘A real scholar, aren’t you, boy?’
‘You must’ve done something really horrible when you were alive,’ I said,
mildly impressed. ‘What was it?’
Tantalus’s eyes narrowed. Behind him, the satyrs were shaking their heads
vigorously, trying to warn me.
‘I’ll be watching you, Percy Jackson,’ Tantalus said. ‘I don’t want any
problems at my camp.’
‘Your camp has problems already … sir.’
‘Oh, go sit down, Johnson,’ Dionysus sighed. ‘I believe that table over there is
yours – the one where no one else ever wants to sit.’
My face was burning, but I knew better than to talk back. Dionysus was an
overgrown brat, but he was an immortal, superpowerful overgrown brat. I said,
‘Come on, Tyson.’
‘Oh, no,’ Tantalus said. ‘The monster stays here. We must decide what to do
with it.’
‘Him’, I snapped. ‘His name is Tyson.’
The new activities director raised an eyebrow.
‘Tyson saved the camp,’ I insisted. ‘He pounded those bronze bulls. Otherwise
they would’ve burned down this whole place.’
‘Yes,’ Tantalus sighed, ‘and what a pity that would’ve been.’
Dionysus snickered.
‘Leave us,’ Tantalus ordered, ‘while we decide this creature’s fate.’
Tyson looked at me with fear in his one big eye, but I knew I couldn’t disobey
a direct order from the camp directors. Not openly, anyway.
‘I’ll be right over here, big guy,’ I promised. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find you a
good place to sleep tonight.’
Tyson nodded. ‘I believe you. You are my friend.’
Which made me feel a whole lot guiltier.
I trudged over to the Poseidon table and slumped onto the bench. A wood
nymph brought me a plate of Olympian olive-and-pepperoni pizza, but I wasn’t
hungry. I’d been almost killed twice today. I’d managed to end my school year
with a complete disaster. Camp Half-Blood was in serious trouble and Chiron
had told me not to do anything about it.
I didn’t feel very thankful, but I took my dinner, as was customary, up to the
bronze brazier and scraped part of it into the flames.
‘Poseidon,’ I murmured, ‘accept my offering.’
And send me some help while you’re at it, I prayed silently. Please.
The smoke from the burning pizza changed into something fragrant – the
smell of a clean sea breeze with wildflowers mixed in – but I had no idea if that
meant my father was really listening.
I went back to my seat. I didn’t think things could get much worse. But then
Tantalus had one of the satyrs blow the conch horn to get our attention for
announcements.
***
‘Yes, well,’ Tantalus said, once the talking had died down. ‘Another fine meal!
Or so I am told.’ As he spoke, he inched his hand towards his refilled dinner
plate, as if maybe the food wouldn’t notice what he was doing, but it did. It shot
away down the table as soon as he got within twenty centimetres.
‘And here on my first day of authority,’ he continued, ‘I’d like to say what a
pleasant form of punishment it is to be here. Over the course of the summer, I
hope to torture, er, interact with each and every one of you children. You all look
good enough to eat.’
Dionysus clapped politely, leading to some half-hearted applause from the
satyrs. Tyson was still standing at the head table, looking uncomfortable, but
every time he tried to scoot out of the limelight, Tantalus pulled him back.
‘And now some changes!’ Tantalus gave the campers a crooked smile. ‘We are
reinstituting the chariot races!’
Murmuring broke out at all the tables – excitement, fear, disbelief.
‘Now I know,’ Tantalus continued, raising his voice, ‘that these races were
discontinued some years ago due to, ah, technical problems.’
‘Three deaths and twenty-six mutilations,’ someone at the Apollo table called.
‘Yes, yes!’ Tantalus said. ‘But I know that you will all join me in welcoming
the return of this camp tradition. Golden laurels will go to the winning
charioteers each month. Teams may register in the morning! The first race will
be held in three days’ time. We will release you from most of your regular
activities to prepare your chariots and choose your horses. Oh, and did I
mention, the victorious team’s cabin will have no chores for the month in which
they win?’
An explosion of excited conversation – no KP for a whole month? No stable
cleaning? Was he serious?
Then the last person I expected to object did so.
‘But, sir!’ Clarisse said. She looked nervous, but she stood up to speak from
the Ares table. Some of the campers snickered when they saw the YOU MOO,
GIRL! sign on her back. ‘What about patrol duty? I mean, if we drop everything
to ready our chariots –’
‘Ah, the hero of the day,’ Tantalus exclaimed. ‘Brave Clarisse, who singlehandedly bested the bronze bulls!’
Clarisse blinked, then blushed. ‘Um, I didn’t –’
‘And modest, too.’ Tantalus grinned. ‘Not to worry, my dear! This is a
summer camp. We are here to enjoy ourselves, yes?’
‘But the tree –’
‘And now,’ Tantalus said, as several of Clarisse’s cabin mates pulled her back
into her seat, ‘before we proceed to the campfire and sing-along, one slight
housekeeping issue. Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase have seen fit, for some
reason, to bring this here.’ Tantalus waved a hand towards Tyson.
Uneasy murmuring spread among the campers. A lot of sideways looks at me.
I wanted to kill Tantalus.
‘Now, of course,’ he said, ‘Cyclopes have a reputation for being bloodthirsty
monsters with a very small brain capacity. Under normal circumstances, I would
release this beast into the woods and have you hunt it down with torches and
pointed sticks. But who knows? Perhaps this Cyclops is not as horrible as most
of its brethren. Until it proves worthy of destruction, we need a place to keep it!
I’ve thought about the stables, but that will make the horses nervous. Hermes’s
cabin, possibly?’
Silence at the Hermes table. Travis and Connor Stoll developed a sudden
interest in the tablecloth. I couldn’t blame them. The Hermes cabin was always
full to bursting. There was no way they could take in a two-metre Cyclops.
‘Come now,’ Tantalus chided. ‘The monster may be able to do some menial
chores. Any suggestions as to where such a beast should be kennelled?’
Suddenly everybody gasped.
Tantalus scooted away from Tyson in surprise. All I could do was stare in
disbelief at the brilliant green light that was about to change my life – a dazzling
holographic image that had appeared above Tyson’s head.
With a sickening twist in my stomach, I remembered what Annabeth had said
about Cyclopes, They’re the children of nature spirits and gods … Well, one god
in particular, usually …
Swirling over Tyson was a glowing green trident – the same symbol that had
appeared above me the day Poseidon had claimed me as his son.
There was a moment of awed silence.
Being claimed was a rare event. Some campers waited in vain for it their
whole lives. When I’d been claimed by Poseidon last summer, everyone had
reverently knelt. But now, they followed Tantalus’s lead, and Tantalus roared
with laughter. ‘Well! I think we know where to put the beast now. By the gods, I
can see the family resemblance!’
Everybody laughed except Annabeth and a few of my other friends.
Tyson didn’t seem to notice. He was too mystified, trying to swat the glowing
trident that was now fading over his head. He was too innocent to understand
how much they were making fun of him, how cruel people were.
But I got it.
I had a new cabin mate. I had a monster for a half-brother.
6
Demon Pigeons Attack
The next few days were torture, just like Tantalus wanted.
First there was Tyson moving into the Poseidon cabin, giggling to himself
every fifteen seconds and saying, ‘Percy is my brother?’ like he’d just won the
lottery.
‘Aw, Tyson,’ I’d say. ‘It’s not that simple.’
But there was no explaining it to him. He was in heaven. And me … as much
as I liked the big guy, I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed. Ashamed. There, I
said it.
My father, the all-powerful Poseidon, had got moony-eyed for some nature
spirit, and Tyson had been the result. I mean, I’d read the myths about Cyclopes.
I even remembered that they were often Poseidon’s children. But I’d never really
processed that this made them my … family. Until I had Tyson living with me in
the next bunk.
And then there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, I wasn’t
Percy Jackson, the cool guy who’d retrieved Zeus’s lightning bolt last summer.
Now I was Percy Jackson, the poor schmuck with the ugly monster for a brother.
‘He’s not my real brother!’ I protested whenever Tyson wasn’t around. ‘He’s
more like a half-brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like … a halfbrother twice removed, or something.’
Nobody bought it.
I admit – I was angry at my dad. I felt like being his son was now a joke.
Annabeth tried to make me feel better. She suggested we team up for the
chariot race to take our minds off our problems. Don’t get me wrong – we both
hated Tantalus and we were worried sick about camp – but we didn’t know what
to do about it. Until we could come up with some brilliant plan to save Thalia’s
tree, we figured we might as well go along with the races. After all, Annabeth’s
mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and my dad had created horses. Together
we would own that track.
One morning Annabeth and I were sitting by the canoe lake sketching chariot
designs when some jokers from Aphrodite’s cabin walked by and asked me if I
needed to borrow some eyeliner for my eye … ‘Oh, sorry, eyes.’
As they walked away laughing, Annabeth grumbled, ‘Just ignore them, Percy.
It isn’t your fault you have a monster for a brother.’
‘He’s not my brother!’ I snapped. ‘And he’s not a monster, either!’
Annabeth raised her eyebrows. ‘Hey, don’t get mad at me! And technically, he
is a monster.’
‘Well, you gave him permission to enter the camp.’
‘Because it was the only way to save your life! I mean … I’m sorry, Percy, I
didn’t expect Poseidon to claim him. Cyclopes are the most deceitful,
treacherous –’
‘He is not! What have you got against Cyclopes, anyway?’
Annabeth’s ears turned pink. I got the feeling there was something she wasn’t
telling me – something bad.
‘Just forget it,’ she said. ‘Now, the axle for this chariot –’
‘You’re treating him like he’s this horrible thing,’ I said. ‘He saved my life.’
Annabeth threw down her pencil and stood. ‘Then maybe you should design a
chariot with him’.
‘Maybe I should.’
‘Fine!’
‘Fine!’
She stormed off and left me feeling even worse than before.
The next couple of days, I tried to keep my mind off my problems.
Silena Beauregard, one of the nicer girls from Aphrodite’s cabin, gave me my
first riding lesson on a pegasus. She explained that there was only one immortal
winged horse named Pegasus, who still wandered free somewhere in the skies,
but over the aeons he’d sired a lot of children, none quite so fast or heroic, but
all named after the first and greatest.
Being the son of the sea god, I never liked going into the air. My dad had this
rivalry with Zeus, so I tried to stay out of the lord of the sky’s domain as much
as possible. But riding a winged horse felt different. It didn’t make me nearly as
nervous as being in an aeroplane. Maybe that was because my dad had created
horses out of sea foam, so the pegasi were sort of … neutral territory. I could
understand their thoughts. I wasn’t surprised when my pegasus went galloping
over the treetops or chased a flock of seagulls into a cloud.
The problem was that Tyson wanted to ride the ‘chicken ponies’, too, but the
pegasi got skittish whenever he approached. I told them telepathically that Tyson
wouldn’t hurt them, but they didn’t seem to believe me. That made Tyson cry.
The only person at camp who had no problem with Tyson was Beckendorf
from the Hephaestus cabin. The blacksmith god had always worked with
Cyclopes in his forges, so Beckendorf took Tyson down to the armoury to teach
him metalworking. He said he’d have Tyson crafting magic items like a master
in no time.
After lunch, I worked out in the arena with Apollo’s cabin. Swordplay had
always been my strength. People said I was better at it than any camper in the
last hundred years, except maybe Luke. People always compared me to Luke.
I thrashed the Apollo guys easily. I should’ve been testing myself against the
Ares and Athena cabins, since they had the best sword fighters, but I didn’t get
along with Clarisse and her siblings, and after my argument with Annabeth, I
just didn’t want to see her.
I went to archery class, even though I was terrible at it, and it wasn’t the same
without Chiron teaching. In arts and crafts, I started a marble bust of Poseidon,
but it started looking like Sylvester Stallone, so I ditched it. I scaled the climbing
wall in full lava-and-earthquake mode. And in the evenings, I did border patrol.
Even though Tantalus had insisted we forget trying to protect the camp, some of
the campers had quietly kept it up, working out a schedule during our free times.
I sat at the top of Half-Blood Hill and watched the dryads come and go,
singing to the dying pine tree. Satyrs brought their reed pipes and played nature
magic songs, and for a while the pine needles seemed to get fuller. The flowers
on the hill smelled a little sweeter and the grass looked greener. But as soon as
the music stopped, the sickness crept back into the air. The whole hill seemed to
be infected, dying from the poison that had sunk into the tree’s roots. The longer
I sat there, the angrier I got.
Luke had done this. I remembered his sly smile, the dragon-claw scar across
his face. He’d pretended to be my friend, and the whole time he’d been Kronos’s
number-one servant.
I opened the palm of my hand. The scar Luke had given me last summer was
fading, but I could still see it – a white asterisk-shaped wound where his pit
scorpion had stung me.
I thought about what Luke had told me right before he’d tried to kill me:
Goodbye, Percy. There is a new Golden Age coming. You won’t be part of it.
At night, I had more dreams of Grover. Sometimes, I just heard snatches of his
voice. Once, I heard him say, It’s here. Another time, He likes sheep.
I thought about telling Annabeth about my dreams, but I would’ve felt stupid.
I mean, He likes sheep? She would’ve thought I was crazy.
The night before the race, Tyson and I finished our chariot. It was wicked
cool. Tyson had made the metal parts in the armoury’s forges. I’d sanded the
wood and put the carriage together. It was blue and white, with wave designs on
the sides and a trident painted on the front. After all that work, it seemed only
fair that Tyson would ride shotgun with me, though I knew the horses wouldn’t
like it, and Tyson’s extra weight would slow us down.
As we were turning in for bed, Tyson said, ‘You are mad?’
I realized I’d been scowling. ‘Nah. I’m not mad.’
He lay down in his bunk and was quiet in the dark. His body was way too long
for his bed. When he pulled up the covers, his feet stuck out the bottom. ‘I am a
monster.’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘It is okay. I will be a good monster. Then you will not have to be mad.’
I didn’t know what to say. I stared at the ceiling and felt like I was dying
slowly, right along with Thalia’s tree.
‘It’s just … I never had a half-brother before.’ I tried to keep my voice from
cracking. ‘It’s really different for me. And I’m worried about the camp. And
another friend of mine, Grover … he might be in trouble. I keep feeling like I
should be doing something to help, but I don’t know what.’
Tyson said nothing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I told him. ‘It’s not your fault. I’m mad at Poseidon. I feel like
he’s trying to embarrass me, like he’s trying to compare us or something, and I
don’t understand why.’
I heard a deep rumbling sound. Tyson was snoring.
I sighed. ‘Goodnight, big guy.’
And I closed my eyes, too.
***
In my dream, Grover was wearing a wedding dress.
It didn’t fit him very well. The gown was too long and the hem was caked
with dried mud. The neckline kept falling off his shoulders. A tattered veil
covered his face.
He was standing in a dank cave, lit only by torches. There was a cot in one
corner and an old-fashioned loom in the other, a length of white cloth half woven
on the frame. And he was staring right at me, like I was a TV programme he’d
been waiting for. ‘Thank the gods!’ he yelped. ‘Can you hear me?’
My dream-self was slow to respond. I was still looking around, taking in the
stalactite ceiling, the stench of sheep and goats, the growling and grumbling and
bleating sounds that seemed to echo from behind a refrigerator-sized boulder,
which was blocking the room’s only exit, as if there were a much larger cavern
beyond it.
‘Percy?’ Grover said. ‘Please, I don’t have the strength to project any better.
You have to hear me!’
‘I hear you,’ I said. ‘Grover, what’s going on?’
From behind the boulder, a monstrous voice yelled, ‘Honeypie! Are you done
yet?’
Grover flinched. He called out in falsetto, ‘Not quite, dearest! A few more
days!’
‘Bah! Hasn’t it been two weeks yet?’
‘N-no, dearest. Just five days. That leaves twelve more to go.’
The monster was silent, maybe trying to do the maths. He must’ve been worse
at arithmetic than I was, because he said, ‘All right, but hurry! I want to
SEEEEE under that veil, heh-heh-heh.’
Grover turned back to me. ‘You have to help me! No time! I’m stuck in this
cave. On an island in the sea.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know exactly! I went to Florida and turned left.’
‘What? How did you –’
‘It’s a trap!’ Grover said. ‘It’s the reason no satyr has ever returned from this
quest. He’s a shepherd, Percy! And he has it. Its nature magic is so powerful it
smells just like the great god Pan! The satyrs come here thinking they’ve found
Pan, and they get trapped and eaten by Polyphemus!’
‘Poly-who?’
‘The Cyclops!’ Grover said, exasperated. ‘I almost got away. I made it all the
way to St Augustine.’
‘But he followed you,’ I said, remembering my first dream. ‘And trapped you
in a bridal boutique.’
‘That’s right,’ Grover said. ‘My first empathy link must’ve worked then.
Look, this bridal dress is the only thing keeping me alive. He thinks I smell
good, but I told him it was just goat-scented perfume. Thank goodness he can’t
see very well. His eye is still half blind from the last time somebody poked it
out. But soon he’ll realize what I am. He’s only giving me two weeks to finish
the bridal train, and he’s getting impatient!’
‘Wait a minute. This Cyclops thinks you’re –’
‘Yes!’ Grover wailed. ‘He thinks I’m a lady Cyclops and he wants to marry
me!’
Under different circumstances, I might’ve busted out laughing, but Grover’s
voice was deadly serious. He was shaking with fear.
‘I’ll come rescue you,’ I promised. ‘Where are you?’
‘The Sea of Monsters, of course!’
‘The sea of what?’
‘I told you! I don’t know exactly where! And look, Percy … um, I’m really
sorry about this, but this empathy link … well, I had no choice. Our emotions are
connected now. If I die…’
‘Don’t tell me, I’ll die, too.’
‘Oh, well, perhaps not. You might live for years in a vegetative state. But, uh,
it would be a lot better if you got me out of here.’
‘Honeypie!’ the monster bellowed. ‘Dinnertime! Yummy yummy sheep meat!’
Grover whimpered. ‘I have to go. Hurry!’
‘Wait! You said “it” was here. What?’
But Grover’s voice was already growing fainter. ‘Sweet dreams. Don’t let me
die!’
The dream faded and I woke with a start. It was early morning. Tyson was
staring down at me, his one big brown eye full of concern.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked.
His voice sent a chill down my back, because he sounded almost exactly like
the monster I’d heard in my dream.
The morning of the race was hot and humid. Fog lay low on the ground like
sauna steam. Millions of birds were roosting in the trees – fat grey-and-white
pigeons, except they didn’t coo like regular pigeons. They made this annoying
metallic screeching sound that reminded me of submarine radar.
The racetrack had been built in a grassy field between the archery range and
the woods. Hephaestus’s cabin had used the bronze bulls, which were
completely tame since they’d had their heads smashed in, to plough an oval track
in a matter of minutes.
There were rows of stone steps for the spectators – Tantalus, the satyrs, a few
dryads and all of the campers who weren’t participating. Mr D didn’t show. He
never got up before ten o’clock.
‘Right!’ Tantalus announced as the teams began to assemble. A naiad had
brought him a big platter of pastries, and as Tantalus spoke his right hand chased
a chocolate eclair across the judge’s table. ‘You all know the rules. A quartermile track. Twice around to win. Two horses per chariot. Each team will consist
of a driver and a fighter. Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try
not to kill anybody!’ Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children.
‘Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s’mores at the campfire for a
week! Now ready your chariots!’
Beckendorf led the Hephaestus team onto the track. They had a sweet ride
made of bronze and iron – even the horses, which were magical automatons like
the Colchis bulls. I had no doubt that their chariot had all kinds of mechanical
traps and more fancy options than a fully loaded Maserati.
The Ares chariot was blood-red, and pulled by two grisly horse skeletons.
Clarisse climbed aboard with a batch of javelins, spiked balls, caltrops and a
bunch of other nasty toys.
Apollo’s chariot was trim and graceful and completely gold, pulled by two
beautiful palominos. Their fighter was armed with a bow, though he had
promised not to shoot regular pointed arrows at the opposing drivers.
Hermes’s chariot was green and kind of old-looking, as if it hadn’t been out of
the garage in years. It didn’t look like anything special, but it was manned by the
Stoll brothers, and I shuddered to think what dirty tricks they’d schemed up.
That left two chariots: one driven by Annabeth, and the other by me.
Before the race began, I tried to approach Annabeth and tell her about my
dream.
She perked up when I mentioned Grover, but when I told her what he’d said,
she seemed to get distant again, suspicious.
‘You’re trying to distract me,’ she decided.
‘What? No, I’m not!’
‘Oh, right! Like Grover would just happen to stumble across the one thing that
could save the camp.’
‘What do you mean?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Go back to your chariot, Percy.’
‘I’m not making this up. He’s in trouble, Annabeth.’
She hesitated. I could tell she was trying to decide whether or not to trust me.
Despite our occasional fights, we’d been through a lot together. And I knew she
would never want anything bad to happen to Grover.
‘Percy, an empathy link is so hard to do. I mean, it’s more likely you really
were dreaming.’
‘The Oracle,’ I said. ‘We could consult the Oracle.’
Annabeth frowned.
Last summer, before my quest, I’d visited the strange spirit that lived in the
Big House attic and it had given me a prophecy that came true in ways I’d never
expected. The experience had freaked me out for months. Annabeth knew I’d
never suggest going back there if I wasn’t completely serious.
Before she could answer, the conch horn sounded.
‘Charioteers!’ Tantalus called. ‘To your mark!’
‘We’ll talk later,’ Annabeth told me, ‘after I win.’
As I was walking back to my own chariot, I noticed how many more pigeons
were in the trees now – screeching like crazy, making the whole forest rustle.
Nobody else seemed to be paying them much attention, but they made me
nervous. Their beaks glinted strangely. Their eyes seemed shinier than regular
birds.
Tyson was having trouble getting our horses under control. I had to talk to
them a long time before they would settle down.
He’s a monster, lord! they complained to me.
He’s a son of Poseidon, I told them. Just like … well, just like me.
No! they insisted. Monster! Horse-eater! Not trusted!
I’ll give you sugar cubes at the end of the race, I said.
Sugar cubes?
Very big sugar cubes. And apples. Did I mention the apples?
Finally they agreed to let me harness them.
Now, if you’ve never seen a Greek chariot, it’s built for speed, not safety or
comfort. It’s basically a wooden basket, open at the back, mounted on an axle
between two wheels. The driver stands up the whole time, and you can feel
every bump in the road. The carriage is made of such light wood that if you wipe
out making the hairpin turns at either end of the track, you’ll probably tip over
and crush both the chariot and yourself. It’s an even better rush than
skateboarding.
I took the reins and manoeuvred the chariot to the starting line. I gave Tyson a
three-metre pole and told him that his job was to push the other chariots away if
they got too close, and to deflect anything they might try to throw at us.
‘No hitting ponies with the stick,’ he insisted.
‘No,’ I agreed. ‘Or people, either, if you can help it. We’re going to run a clean
race. Just keep the distractions away and let me concentrate on driving.’
‘We will win!’ He beamed.
We are so going to lose, I thought to myself, but I had to try. I wanted to show
the others … well, I wasn’t sure what, exactly. That Tyson wasn’t such a bad
guy? That I wasn’t ashamed of being seen with him in public? Maybe that they
hadn’t hurt me with all their jokes and name-calling?
As the chariots lined up, more shiny-eyed pigeons gathered in the woods.
They were screeching so loudly the campers in the stands were starting to take
notice, glancing nervously at the trees, which shivered under the weight of the
birds. Tantalus didn’t look concerned, but he did have to speak up to be heard
over the noise.
‘Charioteers!’ he shouted. ‘Attend your mark!’
He waved his hand and the starting signal dropped. The chariots roared to life.
Hooves thundered against the dirt. The crowd cheered.
Almost immediately there was a loud nasty crack! I looked back in time to see
the Apollo chariot flip over. The Hermes chariot had rammed into it – maybe by
mistake, maybe not. The riders were thrown free, but their panicked horses
dragged the golden chariot diagonally across the track. The Hermes team, Travis
and Connor Stoll, were laughing at their good luck, but not for long. The Apollo
horses crashed into theirs, and the Hermes chariot flipped too, leaving a pile of
broken wood and four rearing horses in the dust.
Two chariots down in the first six metres. I loved this sport.
I turned my attention back to the front. We were making good time, pulling
ahead of Ares, but Annabeth’s chariot was way ahead of us. She was already
making her turn around the first post, her javelin man grinning and waving at us,
shouting, ‘See ya!’
The Hephaestus chariot was starting to gain on us, too.
Beckendorf pressed a button, and a panel slid open on the side of his chariot.
‘Sorry, Percy!’ he yelled. Three sets of balls and chains shot straight towards
our wheels. They would’ve wrecked us completely if Tyson hadn’t whacked
them aside with a quick swipe of his pole. He gave the Hephaestus chariot a
good shove and sent them skittering sideways while we pulled ahead.
‘Nice work, Tyson!’ I yelled.
‘Birds!’ he cried.
‘What?’
We were whipping along so fast it was hard to hear or see anything, but Tyson
pointed towards the woods and I saw what he was worried about. The pigeons
had risen from the trees. They were spiralling like a huge tornado, heading
towards the track.
No big deal, I told myself. They’re just pigeons.
I tried to concentrate on the race.
We made our first turn, the wheels creaking under us, the chariot threatening
to tip, but we were now only three metres behind Annabeth. If I could just get a
little closer, Tyson could use his pole …
Annabeth’s fighter wasn’t smiling now. He pulled a javelin from his collection
and took aim at me. He was about to throw when we heard the screaming.
The pigeons were swarming – thousands of them dive-bombing the spectators
in the stands, attacking the other chariots. Beckendorf was mobbed. His fighter
tried to bat the birds away but he couldn’t see anything. The chariot veered off
course and ploughed through the strawberry fields, the mechanical horses
steaming.
In the Ares chariot, Clarisse barked an order to her fighter, who quickly threw
a screen of camouflage netting over their basket. The birds swarmed around it,
pecking and clawing at the fighter’s hands as he tried to hold up the net, but
Clarisse just gritted her teeth and kept driving. Her skeletal horses seemed
immune to the distraction. The pigeons pecked uselessly at their empty eye
sockets and flew through their rib cages, but the stallions kept right on running.
The spectators weren’t so lucky. The birds were slashing at any bit of exposed
flesh, driving everyone into a panic. Now that the birds were closer, it was clear
they weren’t normal pigeons. Their eyes were beady and evil-looking. Their
beaks were made of bronze, and, judging from the yelps of the campers, they
must’ve been razor sharp.
‘Stymphalian birds!’ Annabeth yelled. She slowed down and pulled her
chariot alongside mine. ‘They’ll strip everyone to bones if we don’t drive them
away!’
‘Tyson,’ I said, ‘we’re turning around!’
‘Going the wrong way?’ he asked.
‘Always,’ I grumbled, but I steered the chariot towards the stands.
Annabeth rode right next to me. She shouted, ‘Heroes, to arms!’ But I wasn’t
sure anyone could hear her over the screeching of the birds and the general
chaos.
I held my reins in one hand and managed to draw Riptide as a wave of birds
dived at my face, their metal beaks snapping. I slashed them out of the air and
they exploded into dust and feathers, but there were still millions of them left.
One nailed me in the back end and I almost jumped straight out of the chariot.
Annabeth wasn’t having much better luck. The closer we got to the stands, the
thicker the cloud of birds became.
Some of the spectators were trying to fight back. The Athena campers were
calling for shields. The archers from Apollo’s cabin brought out their bows and
arrows, ready to slay the menace, but with so many campers mixed in with the
birds, it wasn’t safe to shoot.
‘Too many!’ I yelled to Annabeth. ‘How do you get rid of them?’
She stabbed at a pigeon with her knife. ‘Heracles used noise! Brass bells! He
scared them away with the most horrible sound he could –’
Her eyes got wide. ‘Percy … Chiron’s collection!’
I understood instantly. ‘You think it’ll work?’
She handed her fighter the reins and leaped from her chariot into mine like it
was the easiest thing in the world. ‘To the Big House! It’s our only chance!’
Clarisse had just pulled across the finish line, completely unopposed, and
seemed to notice for the first time how serious the bird problem was.
When she saw us driving away, she yelled, ‘You’re running? The fight is here,
cowards!’ She drew her sword and charged for the stands.
I urged our horses into a gallop. The chariot rumbled through the strawberry
fields, across the volleyball pit, and lurched to a halt in front of the Big House.
Annabeth and I ran inside, tearing down the hallway to Chiron’s apartment.
His boom box was still on his nightstand. So were his favourite CDs. I
grabbed the most repulsive one I could find, Annabeth snatched the boom box,
and together we ran back outside.
Down at the track, the chariots were in flames. Wounded campers ran in every
direction, with birds shredding their clothes and pulling out their hair, while
Tantalus chased breakfast pastries around the stands, every once in a while
yelling, ‘Everything’s under control! Not to worry!’
We pulled up to the finish line. Annabeth got the boom box ready. I prayed the
batteries weren’t dead.
I pressed PLAY and started up Chiron’s favourite – the All-Time Greatest Hits
of Dean Martin. Suddenly the air was filled with violins and a bunch of guys
moaning in Italian.
The demon pigeons went nuts. They started flying in circles, running into each
other like they wanted to bash their own brains out. Then they abandoned the
track altogether and flew skywards in a huge dark wave.
‘Now!’ shouted Annabeth. ‘Archers!’
With clear targets, Apollo’s archers had flawless aim. Most of them could
nock five or six arrows at once. Within minutes, the ground was littered with
dead bronze-beaked pigeons, and the survivors were a distant trail of smoke on
the horizon.
The camp was saved, but the wreckage wasn’t pretty. Most of the chariots had
been completely destroyed. Almost everyone was wounded, bleeding from
multiple bird pecks. The kids from Aphrodite’s cabin were screaming because
their hairdos had been ruined and their clothes pooped on.
‘Bravo!’ Tantalus said, but he wasn’t looking at me or Annabeth. ‘We have
our first winner!’ He walked to the finish line and awarded the golden laurels for
the race to a stunned-looking Clarisse.
Then he turned and smiled at me. And now to punish the troublemakers who
disrupted this race.’
7
I Accept Gifts from a Stranger
The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their
own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson and
I hadn’t disturbed them with our bad chariot driving.
This was so completely unfair, I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut, which
didn’t help his mood. He sentenced us to kitchen patrol – scrubbing pots and
platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The
harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill
ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Annabeth and I had to wear
asbestos gloves and aprons.
Tyson didn’t mind. He plunged his bare hands right in and started scrubbing,
but Annabeth and I had to suffer through hours of hot, dangerous work,
especially since there were tons of extra plates. Tantalus had ordered a special
luncheon banquet to celebrate Clarisse’s chariot victory – a full-course meal
featuring country-fried Stymphalian death-bird.
The only good thing about our punishment was that it gave Annabeth and me
a common enemy and lots of time to talk. After listening to my dream about
Grover again, she looked like she might be starting to believe me.
‘If he’s really found it,’ she murmured, ‘and if we could retrieve it –’
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘You act like this … whatever-it-is Grover found is the only
thing in the world that could save the camp. What is it?’
‘I’ll give you a hint. What do you get when you skin a ram?’
‘Messy?’
She sighed. ‘A fleece. The coat of a ram is called a fleece. And if that ram
happens to have golden wool –’
‘The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?’
Annabeth scraped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. ‘Percy,
remember the Grey Sisters? They said they knew the location of the thing you
seek. And they mentioned Jason. Three thousand years ago, they told him how to
find the Golden Fleece. You do know the story of Jason and the Argonauts?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That old movie with the clay skeletons.’
Annabeth rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my gods, Percy! You are so hopeless.’
‘What?’ I demanded.
‘Just listen. The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of
Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human
sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical
flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them
all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa
fell off and died along the way, but that’s not important.’
‘It was probably important to her.’
‘The point is, when Cadmus got to Colchis, he sacrificed the golden ram to the
gods and hung the Fleece in a tree in the middle of the kingdom. The Fleece
brought prosperity to the land. Animals stopped getting sick. Plants grew better.
Farmers had bumper crops. Plagues never visited. That’s why Jason wanted the
Fleece. It can revitalize any land where it’s placed. It cures sickness, strengthens
nature, cleans up pollution –’
‘It could cure Thalia’s tree.’
Annabeth nodded. And it would totally strengthen the borders of Camp HalfBlood. But Percy, the Fleece has been missing for centuries. Tons of heroes have
searched for it with no luck.’
‘But Grover found it,’ I said. ‘He went looking for Pan and he found the
Fleece instead because they both radiate nature magic. It makes sense, Annabeth.
We can rescue him and save the camp at the same time. It’s perfect!’
Annabeth hesitated. ‘A little too perfect, don’t you think? What if it’s a trap?’
I remembered last summer, how Kronos had manipulated our quest. He’d
almost fooled us into helping him start a war that would’ve destroyed Western
Civilization.
‘What choice do we have?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to help me rescue Grover
or not?’
She glanced at Tyson, who’d lost interest in our conversation and was happily
making toy boats out of cups and spoons in the lava.
‘Percy,’ she said under her breath, ‘we’ll have to fight a Cyclops. Polyphemus,
the worst of the Cyclopes. And there’s only one place his island could be. The
Sea of Monsters.’
‘Where’s that?’
She stared at me like she thought I was playing dumb. ‘The Sea of Monsters.
The same sea Odysseus sailed through, and Jason, and Aeneas and all the
others.’
‘You mean the Mediterranean?’
‘No. Well, yes … but no.’
‘Another straight answer. Thanks.’
‘Look, Percy, the Sea of Monsters is the sea all heroes sail through on their
adventures. It used to be in the Mediterranean, yes. But like everything else, it
shifts locations as the West’s centre of power shifts.’
‘Like Mount Olympus being above the Empire State Building,’ I said. ‘And
Hades being under Los Angeles.’
‘Right.’
‘But a whole sea full of monsters – how could you hide something like that?
Wouldn’t the mortals notice weird things happening … like, ships getting eaten
and stuff?’
‘Of course they notice. They don’t understand, but they know something is
strange about that part of the ocean. The Sea of Monsters is off the east coast of
the U.S. now, just north-east of Florida. The mortals even have a name for it.’
‘The Bermuda Triangle?’
‘Exactly.’
I let that sink in. I guess it wasn’t stranger than anything else I’d learned since
coming to Camp Half-Blood. ‘Okay … so at least we know where to look.’
‘It’s still a huge area, Percy. Searching for one tiny island in monster-infested
waters –’
‘Hey, I’m the son of the sea god. This is my home turf. How hard can it be?’
Annabeth knitted her eyebrows. ‘We’ll have to talk to Tantalus, get approval
for a quest. He’ll say no.’
‘Not if we tell him tonight at the campfire in front of everybody. The whole
camp will hear. They’ll pressure him. He won’t be able to refuse.’
‘Maybe.’ A little bit of hope crept into Annabeth’s voice. ‘We’d better get
these dishes done. Hand me the lava spray gun, will you?’
That night at the campfire, Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along. They tried to get
everybody’s spirits up, but it wasn’t easy after that afternoons bird attack. We all
sat around a semicircle of stone steps, singing half-heartedly and watching the
bonfire blaze while the Apollo guys strummed their guitars and picked their
lyres.
We did all the standard camp numbers: ‘Down by the Aegean’, ‘I Am My
Own Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa’, ‘This Land is Minos’s Land’. The
bonfire was enchanted, so the louder you sang, the higher it rose, changing
colour and heat with the mood of the crowd. On a good night, I’d seen it six
metres high, bright purple, and so hot the whole front row’s marshmallows burst
into flames. Tonight, the fire was only a metre high, barely warm, and the flames
were the colour of lint.
Dionysus left early. After suffering through a few songs, he muttered
something about how even pinochle with Chiron had been more exciting than
this. Then he gave Tantalus a distasteful look and headed back towards the Big
House.
When the last song was over, Tantalus said, ‘Well, that was lovely!’
He came forward with a toasted marshmallow on a stick and tried to pluck it
off, real casual-like. But before he could touch it, the marshmallow flew off the
stick. Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide,
diving into the flames.
Tantalus turned back towards us, smiling coldly. ‘Now then! Some
announcements about tomorrow’s schedule.’
‘Sir,’ I said.
Tantalus’s eye twitched. ‘Our kitchen boy has something to say?’
Some of the Ares campers snickered, but I wasn’t going to let anybody
embarrass me into silence. I stood and looked at Annabeth. Thank the gods, she
stood up with me.
I said, ‘We have an idea to save the camp.’
Dead silence, but I could tell I’d got everybody’s interest, because the
campfire flared bright yellow.
‘Indeed,’ Tantalus said blandly. ‘Well, if it has anything to do with chariots –’
‘The Golden Fleece,’ I said. ‘We know where it is.’
The flames burned orange. Before Tantalus could stop me, I blurted out my
dream about Grover and Polyphemus’s island. Annabeth stepped in and
reminded everybody what the Fleece could do. It sounded more convincing
coming from her.
‘The Fleece can save the camp,’ she concluded. ‘I’m certain of it.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Tantalus. ‘We don’t need saving.’
Everybody stared at him until Tantalus started looking uncomfortable.
‘Besides,’ he added quickly, ‘the Sea of Monsters? That’s hardly an exact
location. You wouldn’t even know where to look.’
‘Yes, I would,’ I said.
Annabeth leaned towards me and whispered, ‘You would?’
I nodded, because Annabeth had jogged something in my memory when she
reminded me about our taxi drive with the Grey Sisters. At the time, the
information they’d given me made no sense. But now …
‘Thirty, thirty-one, seventy-five, twelve,’ I said.
‘Ooo-kay,’ Tantalus said. ‘Thank you for sharing those meaningless numbers.’
‘They’re sailing coordinates,’ I said. ‘Latitude and longitude. I, uh, learned
about it in social studies.’
Even Annabeth looked impressed. ‘Thirty degrees, thirty-one minutes north,
seventy-five degrees, twelve minutes west. He’s right! The Grey Sisters gave us
those coordinates. That’d be somewhere in the Atlantic, off the coast of Florida.
The Sea of Monsters. We need a quest!’
‘Wait just a minute,’ Tantalus said.
But the campers took up the chant. ‘We need a quest! We need a quest!’
The flames rose higher.
‘It isn’t necessary!’ Tantalus insisted.
‘WE NEED A QUEST! WE NEED A QUEST!’
‘Fine!’ Tantalus shouted, his eyes blazing with anger. ‘You brats want me to
assign a quest?’
‘YES!’
‘Very well,’ he agreed. ‘I shall authorize a champion to undertake this perilous
journey, to retrieve the Golden Fleece and bring it back to camp. Or die trying.’
My heart filled with excitement. I wasn’t going to let Tantalus scare me. This
was what I needed to do. I was going to save Grover and the camp. Nothing
would stop me.
‘I will allow our champion to consult the Oracle!’ Tantalus announced. ‘And
choose two companions for the journey. And I think the choice of champions is
obvious.’
Tantalus looked at Annabeth and me as if he wanted to flay us alive. ‘The
champion should be one who has earned the camp’s respect, who has proven
resourceful in the chariot races and courageous in the defence of the camp. You
shall lead this quest … Clarisse!’
The fire flickered a thousand different colours. The Ares cabin started
stomping and cheering, ‘CLARISSE! CLARISSE!’
Clarisse stood up, looking stunned. Then she swallowed, and her chest
swelled with pride. ‘I accept the quest!’
‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Grover is my friend. The dream came to me’.
‘Sit down!’ yelled one of the Ares campers. ‘You had your chance last
summer!’
‘Yeah, he just wants to be in the spotlight again!’ another said.
Clarisse glared at me. ‘I accept the quest!’ she repeated. ‘I, Clarisse, daughter
of Ares, will save the camp!’
The Ares campers cheered even louder. Annabeth protested, and the other
Athena campers joined in. Everybody else started taking sides – shouting and
arguing and throwing marshmallows. I thought it was going to turn into a fully
fledged s’more war until Tantalus shouted, ‘Silence, you brats!’
His tone stunned even me.
‘Sit down!’ he ordered. ‘And I will tell you a ghost story.’
I didn’t know what he was up to, but we all moved reluctantly back to our
seats. The evil aura radiating from Tantalus was as strong as any monster I’d
ever faced.
‘Once upon a time there was a mortal king who was beloved of the gods!’
Tantalus put his hand on his chest, and I got the feeling he was talking about
himself.
‘This king,’ he said, ‘was even allowed to feast on Mount Olympus. But when
he tried to take some ambrosia and nectar back to earth to figure out the recipe –
just one little doggy bag, mind you – the gods punished him. They banned him
from their halls forever! His own people mocked him! His children scolded him!
And, oh yes, campers, he had horrible children. Children – just – like – you!’
He pointed a crooked finger at several people in the audience, including me.
‘Do you know what he did to his ungrateful children?’ Tantalus asked softly.
‘Do you know how he paid back the gods for their cruel punishment? He invited
the Olympians to a feast at his palace, just to show there were no hard feelings.
No one noticed that his children were missing. And when he served the gods
dinner, my dear campers, can you guess what was in the stew?’
No one dared answer. The firelight glowed dark blue, reflecting evilly on
Tantalus’s crooked face.
‘Oh, the gods punished him in the afterlife,’ Tantalus croaked. ‘They did
indeed. But he’d had his moment of satisfaction, hadn’t he? His children never
again spoke back to him or questioned his authority. And do you know what?
Rumour has it that the king’s spirit now dwells at this very camp, waiting for a
chance to take revenge on ungrateful, rebellious children. And so … are there
any more complaints, before we send Clarisse off on her quest?’
Silence.
Tantalus nodded at Clarisse. ‘The Oracle, my dear. Go on.’
She shifted uncomfortably, like even she didn’t want glory at the price of
being Tantalus’s pet. ‘Sir –’
‘Go!’ he snarled.
She bowed awkwardly and hurried off towards the Big House.
‘What about you, Percy Jackson?’ Tantalus asked. ‘No comments from our
dishwasher?’
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of punishing
me again.
‘Good,’ Tantalus said. ‘And let me remind everyone – no one leaves this camp
without my permission. Anyone who tries … well, if they survive the attempt,
they will be expelled forever, but it won’t come to that. The harpies will be
enforcing curfew from now on, and they are always hungry! Good night, my
dear campers. Sleep well.’
With a wave of Tantalus’s hand, the fire was extinguished, and the campers
trailed off towards their cabins in the dark.
I couldn’t explain things to Tyson. He knew I was sad. He knew I wanted to go
on a trip and Tantalus wouldn’t let me.
‘You will go anyway?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘It would be hard. Very hard.’
‘I will help.’
‘No. I – uh, I couldn’t ask you to do that, big guy. Too dangerous.’
Tyson looked down at the pieces of metal he was assembling in his lap –
springs and gears and tiny wires. Beckendorf had given him some tools and
spare parts, and now Tyson spent every night tinkering, though I wasn’t sure
how his huge hands could handle such delicate little pieces.
‘What are you building?’ I asked.
Tyson didn’t answer. Instead he made a whimpering sound in the back of his
throat. ‘Annabeth doesn’t like Cyclopes. You … don’t want me along?’
‘Oh, that’s not it,’ I said half-heartedly. ‘Annabeth likes you. Really.’
He had tears in the corners of his eye.
I remembered that Grover, like all satyrs, could read human emotions. I
wondered if Cyclopes had the same ability.
Tyson folded up his tinkering project in an oilcloth. He lay down on his bunk
bed and hugged his bundle like a teddy bear. When he turned towards the wall, I
could see the weird scars on his back, like somebody had ploughed over him
with a tractor. I wondered for the millionth time how he’d got hurt.
‘Daddy always cared for m-me,’ he sniffled. ‘Now … I think he was mean to
have a Cyclops boy. I should not have been born.’
‘Don’t talk that way! Poseidon claimed you, didn’t he? So … he must care
about you … a lot…’
My voice trailed off as I thought about all those years Tyson had lived on the
streets of New York in a cardboard refrigerator box. How could Tyson think that
Poseidon had cared for him? What kind of dad let that happen to his kid, even if
his kid was a monster?
‘Tyson … camp will be a good home for you. The others will get used to you.
I promise.’
Tyson sighed. I waited for him to say something. Then I realized he was
already asleep.
I lay back on my bed and tried to close my eyes, but I just couldn’t. I was
afraid I might have another dream about Grover. If the empathy link was real …
if something happened to Grover … would I ever wake up?
The full moon shone through my window. The sound of the surf rumbled in
the distance. I could smell the warm scent of the strawberry fields, and hear the
laughter of the dryads as they chased owls through the forest. But something felt
wrong about the night – the sickness of Thalia’s tree, spreading across the valley.
Could Clarisse save Half-Blood Hill? I thought the odds were better of me
getting a ‘Best Camper’ award from Tantalus.
I got out of bed and pulled on some clothes. I grabbed a beach blanket and a
six-pack of Coke from under my bunk. The Cokes were against the rules. No
outside snacks or drinks were allowed, but if you talked to the right guy in
Hermes’s cabin and paid him a few golden drachmas, he could smuggle in
almost anything from the nearest convenience store.
Sneaking out after curfew was against the rules, too. If I got caught I’d either
get in big trouble or be eaten by the harpies. But I wanted to see the ocean. I
always felt better there. My thoughts were clearer. I left the cabin and headed for
the beach.
***
I spread my blanket near the surf and popped open a Coke. For some reason
sugar and caffeine always calmed down my hyperactive brain. I tried to decide
what to do to save the camp, but nothing came to me. I wished Poseidon would
talk to me, give me some advice or something.
The sky was clear and starry. I was checking out the constellations Annabeth
had taught me – Sagittarius, Heracles, Corona Borealis – when somebody said,
‘Beautiful, aren’t they?’
I almost spewed soda.
Standing right next to me was a guy in nylon running shorts and a New York
City Marathon T-shirt. He was slim and fit, with salt-and-pepper hair and a sly
smile. He looked kind of familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.
My first thought was that he must’ve been taking a midnight jog down the
beach and strayed inside the camp borders. That wasn’t supposed to happen.
Regular mortals couldn’t enter the valley. But maybe with the tree’s magic
weakening he’d managed to slip in. But in the middle of the night? And there
was nothing around except farmland and state preserves. Where would this guy
have jogged from?
‘May I join you?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t sat down in ages.’
Now, I know – a strange guy in the middle of the night. Common sense: I was
supposed to run away, yell for help, etc. But the guy acted so calm about the
whole thing that I found it hard to be afraid.
I said, ‘Uh, sure.’
He smiled. ‘Your hospitality does you credit. Oh, and Coca-Cola! May I?’
He sat at the other end of the blanket, popped a soda and took a drink. ‘Ah …
that hits the spot. Peace and quiet at –’
A cell phone went off in his pocket.
The jogger sighed. He pulled out his phone and my eyes got big, because it
glowed with a bluish light. When he extended the antenna, two creatures began
writhing around it – green snakes, no bigger than earthworms.
The jogger didn’t seem to notice. He checked his LCD screen and cursed.
‘I’ve got to take this. Just a sec…’ Then into the phone, ‘Hello?’
He listened. The mini-snakes writhed up and down the antenna right next to
his ear.
‘Yeah,’ the jogger said. ‘Listen – I know, but … I don’t care if he is chained to
a rock with vultures pecking at his liver, if he doesn’t have a tracking number,
we can’t locate his package … A gift to humankind, great … You know how
many of those we deliver – Oh, never mind. Listen, just refer him to Eris in
customer service. I gotta go.’
He hung up. ‘Sorry. The overnight express business is just booming. Now, as I
was saying –’
‘You have snakes on your phone.’
‘What? Oh, they don’t bite. Say hello, George and Martha.’
Hello, George and Martha, a raspy male voice said inside my head.
Don’t be sarcastic, said a female voice.
Why not? George demanded. I do all the real work.
‘Oh, let’s not go into that again!’ The jogger slipped his phone back into his
pocket. ‘Now, where were we … Ah, yes. Peace and quiet.’
He crossed his ankles and stared up at the stars. ‘Been a long time since I’ve
got to relax. Ever since the telegraph – rush, rush, rush. Do you have a favourite
constellation, Percy?’
I was still kind of wondering about the little green snakes he’d shoved into his
jogging shorts, but I said, ‘Uh, I like Heracles.’
‘Why?’
‘Well … because he had rotten luck. Even worse than mine. It makes me feel
better.’
The jogger chuckled. ‘Not because he was strong and famous and all that?’
‘No.’
‘You’re an interesting young man. And so, what now?’
I knew immediately what he was asking. What did I intend to do about the
Fleece?
Before I could answer, Martha the snake’s muffled voice came from his
pocket, I have Demeter on line two.
‘Not now,’ the jogger said. ‘Tell her to leave a message.’
She’s not going to like that. The last time you put her off, all the flowers in the
floral delivery division wilted.
‘Just tell her I’m in a meeting!’ The jogger rolled his eyes. ‘Sorry again, Percy.
You were saying…’
‘Um … who are you, exactly?’
‘Haven’t you guessed by now, a smart boy like you?’
Show him! Martha pleaded. I haven’t been full-size for months.
Don’t listen to her! George said. She just wants to show off!
The man took out his phone again. ‘Original form, please.’
The phone glowed a brilliant blue. It stretched into a metre-long wooden staff
with dove wings sprouting out the top. George and Martha, now full-sized green
snakes, coiled together around the middle. It was a caduceus, the symbol of
Cabin Eleven.
My throat tightened. I realized who the jogger reminded me of with his elfish
features, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes….
‘You’re Luke’s father,’ I said. ‘Hermes.’
The god pursed his lips. He stuck his caduceus in the sand like an umbrella
pole. ‘ “Luke’s father.” Normally, that’s not the first way people introduce me.
God of thieves, yes. God of messengers and travellers, if they wish to be kind.’
God of thieves works, George said.
Oh, don’t mind George. Martha flicked her tongue at me. He’s just bitter
because Hermes likes me best.
He does not!
Does too!
‘Behave, you two,’ Hermes warned, ‘or I’ll turn you back into a cell phone
and set you on vibrate! Now, Percy, you still haven’t answered my question.
What do you intend to do about the quest?’
‘I – I don’t have permission to go.’
‘No, indeed. Will that stop you?’
‘I want to go. I have to save Grover.’
Hermes smiled. ‘I knew a boy once … oh, younger than you by far. A mere
baby, really.’
Here we go again, George said. Always talking about himself.
Quiet! Martha snapped. Do you want to get set on vibrate?
Hermes ignored them. ‘One night, when this boy’s mother wasn’t watching,
he sneaked out of their cave and stole some cattle that belonged to Apollo.’
‘Did he get blasted to tiny pieces?’ I asked.
‘Hmm … no. Actually, everything turned out quite well. To make up for his
theft, the boy gave Apollo an instrument he’d invented – a lyre. Apollo was so
enchanted with the music that he forgot all about being angry.’
‘So what’s the moral?’
‘The moral?’ Hermes asked. ‘Goodness, you act like it’s a fable. It’s a true
story. Does truth have a moral?’
‘Um…’
‘How about this: stealing is not always bad?’
‘I don’t think my mom would like that moral.’
Rats are delicious, suggested George.
What does that have to do with the story? Martha demanded.
Nothing, George said. But I’m hungry.
‘I’ve got it,’ Hermes said. ‘Young people don’t always do what they’re told,
but if they can pull it off and do something wonderful, sometimes they escape
punishment. How’s that?’
‘You’re saying I should go anyway,’ I said, ‘even without permission.’
Hermes’s eyes twinkled. ‘Martha, may I have the first package, please?’
Martha opened her mouth … and kept opening it until it was as wide as my
arm. She belched out a stainless steel canister – an old-fashioned lunch box flask
with a black plastic top. The sides of the flask were enamelled with red and
yellow Ancient Greek scenes – a hero killing a lion; a hero lifting up Cerberus,
the three-headed dog.
‘That’s Heracles,’ I said. ‘But how –’
‘Never question a gift,’ Hermes chided. ‘This is a collector’s item from
Heracles Busts Heads. The first season.’
‘Heracles Busts Heads?’
‘Great show.’ Hermes sighed. ‘Back before Hephaestus-TV was all reality
programming. Of course, the Flask would be worth much more if I had the
whole lunch box –’
Or if it hadn’t been in Martha’s mouth, George added.
I’ll get you for that. Martha began chasing him around the caduceus.
‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘This is a gift?’
‘One of two,’ Hermes said. ‘Go on, pick it up.’
I almost dropped it because it was freezing cold on one side and burning hot
on the other. The weird thing was, when I turned the Flask, the side facing the
ocean – north – was always the cold side…
‘It’s a compass!’ I said.
Hermes looked surprised. ‘Very clever. I never thought of that. But its
intended use is a bit more dramatic. Uncap it, and you will release the winds
from the four corners of the earth to speed you on your way. Not now! And
please, when the time comes, only unscrew the lid a tiny bit. The winds are a bit
like me – always restless. Should all four escape at once … ah, but I’m sure
you’ll be careful. And now my second gift. George?’
She’s touching me, George complained as he and Martha slithered around the
pole.
‘She’s always touching you,’ Hermes said. ‘You’re intertwined. And if you
don’t stop that, you’ll get knotted again!’
The snakes stopped wrestling.
George unhinged his jaw and coughed up a little plastic bottle filled with
chewable vitamins.
‘You’re kidding,’ I said. ‘Are those Minotaur-shaped?’
Hermes picked up the bottle and rattled it. ‘The lemon ones, yes. The grape
ones are Furies, I think. Or are they hydras? At any rate, these are potent. Don’t
take one unless you really, really need it.’
‘How will I know if I really, really need it?’
‘You’ll know, believe me. Nine essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids …
oh, everything you need to feel yourself again.’
He tossed me the bottle.
‘Um, thanks,’ I said. ‘But Lord Hermes, why are you helping me?’
He gave me a melancholy smile. ‘Perhaps because I hope that you can save
many people on this quest, Percy. Not just your friend Grover.’
I stared at him. ‘You don’t mean … Luke?’
Hermes didn’t answer.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Lord Hermes, I mean, thanks and everything, but you might as
well take back your gifts. Luke can’t be saved. Even if I could find him … he
told me he wanted to tear down Olympus stone by stone. He betrayed everybody
he knew. He – he hates you especially.’
Hermes gazed up at the stars. ‘My dear young cousin, if there’s one thing I’ve
learned over the aeons, it’s that you can’t give up on your family, no matter how
tempting they make it. It doesn’t matter if they hate you, or embarrass you, or
simply don’t appreciate your genius for inventing the internet –’
‘You invented the internet?’
It was my idea, Martha said.
Rats are delicious, George said.
‘It was my idea!’ Hermes said. ‘I mean the internet, not the rats. But that’s not
the point. Percy, do you understand what I’m saying about family?’
‘I – I’m not sure.’
‘You will some day.’ Hermes got up and brushed the sand off his legs. ‘In the
meantime, I must be going.’
You have sixty calls to return, Martha said.
And one thousand and thirty-eight emails, George added. Not counting the
offers for online discount ambrosia.
‘And you, Percy,’ Hermes said, ‘have a shorter deadline than you realize to
complete your quest. Your friends should be coming right about … now.’
I heard Annabeth’s voice calling my name from the sand dunes. Tyson, too,
was shouting from a little bit further away.
‘I hope I packed well for you,’ Hermes said. ‘I do have some experience with
travel.’
He snapped his fingers and three yellow duffel bags appeared at my feet.
‘Waterproof, of course. If you ask nicely, your father should be able to help you
reach the ship.’
‘Ship?’
Hermes pointed. Sure enough, a big cruise ship was cutting across Long
Island Sound, its white-and-gold lights glowing against the dark water.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I don’t understand any of this. I haven’t even agreed to go!’
‘I’d make up your mind in the next five minutes, if I were you,’ Hermes
advised. ‘That’s when the harpies will come to eat you. Now, goodnight, cousin,
and dare I say it? May the gods go with you.’
He opened his hand and the caduceus flew into it.
Good luck, Martha told me.
Bring me back a rat, George said.
The caduceus changed into a cell phone and Hermes slipped it into his pocket.
He jogged off down the beach. Twenty paces away, he shimmered and
vanished, leaving me alone with a flask, a bottle of chewable vitamins and five
minutes to make an impossible decision.
8
We Board the Princess Andromeda
I was staring at the waves when Annabeth and Tyson found me.
‘What’s going on?’ Annabeth asked. ‘I heard you calling for help!’
‘Me, too!’ Tyson said. ‘Heard you yell, “Bad things are attacking!’ ”
‘I didn’t call you guys,’ I said. ‘I’m fine.’
‘But then who…’ Annabeth noticed the three yellow duffel bags, then the
Flask and the bottle of vitamins I was holding. ‘What –’
‘Just listen,’ I said. ‘We don’t have much time.’
I told them about my conversation with Hermes. By the time I was finished, I
could hear screeching in the distance – patrol harpies picking up our scent.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said, ‘we have to do the quest.’
‘We’ll get expelled, you know. Trust me, I’m an expert at getting expelled.’
‘So? If we fail, there won’t be any camp to come back to.’
‘Yeah, but you promised Chiron –’
‘I promised I’d keep you from danger. I can only do that by coming with you!
Tyson can stay behind and tell them –’
‘I want to go,’ Tyson said.
‘No!’ Annabeth’s voice sounded close to panic. ‘I mean … Percy, come on.
You know that’s impossible.’
I wondered again why she had such a grudge against Cyclopes. There was
something she wasn’t telling me.
She and Tyson both looked at me, waiting for an answer. Meanwhile, the
cruise ship was getting further and further away.
The thing was, part of me didn’t want Tyson along. I’d spent the last three
days in close quarters with the guy, getting teased by the other campers and
embarrassed a million times a day, constantly reminded that I was related to him.
I needed some space.
Plus, I didn’t know how much help he’d be, or how I’d keep him safe. Sure,
he was strong, but Tyson was a little kid in Cyclops terms, maybe seven or eight
years old, mentally. I could see him freaking out and starting to cry while we
were trying to sneak past a monster or something. He’d get us all killed.
On the other hand, the sound of the harpies was getting closer…
‘We can’t leave him,’ I decided. ‘Tantalus will punish him for us being gone.’
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said, trying to keep her cool, ‘we’re going to Polyphemus’s
island! Polyphemus is an S-i-k … a C-y-k…’ She stamped her foot in frustration.
As smart as she was, Annabeth was dyslexic, too. We could’ve been there all
night while she tried to spell Cyclops. ‘You know what I mean!’
‘Tyson can go,’ I insisted, ‘if he wants to.’
Tyson clapped his hands. ‘Want to!’
Annabeth gave me the evil eye, but I guess she could tell I wasn’t going to
change my mind. Or maybe she just knew we didn’t have time to argue.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘How do we get to that ship?’
‘Hermes said my father would help.’
‘Well then, Seaweed Brain? What are you waiting for?’
I’d always had a hard time calling on my father, or praying, or whatever you
want to call it, but I stepped into the waves.
‘Um, Dad?’ I called. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Percy!’ Annabeth whispered. ‘We’re in a hurry!’
‘We need your help,’ I called a little louder. ‘We need to get to that ship, like,
before we get eaten and stuff, so…’
At first, nothing happened. Waves crashed against the shore like normal. The
harpies sounded like they were right behind the sand dunes. Then, about a
hundred metres out to sea, three white lines appeared on the surface. They
moved fast towards the shore, like claws ripping through the ocean.
As they neared the beach, the surf burst apart and the heads of three white
stallions reared out of the waves.
Tyson caught his breath. ‘Fish ponies!’
He was right. As the creatures pulled themselves onto the sand, I saw that they
were only horses in the front; their back halves were silvery fish bodies, with
glistening scales and rainbow-tail fins.
‘Hippocampi!’ Annabeth said. ‘They’re beautiful.’
The nearest one whinnied in appreciation and nuzzled Annabeth.
‘We’ll admire them later,’ I said. ‘Come on!’
‘There!’ a voice screeched behind us. ‘Bad children out of cabins! Snack time
for lucky harpies!’
Five of them were fluttering over the top of the dunes – plump little hags with
pinched faces and talons and feathery wings too small for their bodies. They
reminded me of miniature cafeteria ladies who’d been crossbred with dodo birds.
They weren’t very fast, thank the gods, but they were vicious if they caught you.
‘Tyson!’ I said. ‘Grab a duffel bag!’
He was still staring at the hippocampi with his mouth hanging open.
‘Tyson!’
‘Uh?’
‘Come on!’
With Annabeth’s help I got him moving. We gathered the bags and mounted
our steeds. Poseidon must’ve known Tyson was one of the passengers, because
one hippocampus was much larger than the other two – just right for carrying a
Cyclops.
‘Giddy-up!’ I said. My hippocampus turned and plunged into the waves.
Annabeth’s and Tyson’s followed right behind.
The harpies cursed at us, wailing for their snacks to come back, but the
hippocampi raced over the water at the speed of jet skis. The harpies fell behind,
and soon the shore of Camp Half-Blood was nothing but a dark smudge. I
wondered if I’d ever see the place again. But right then I had other problems.
The cruise ship was now looming in front of us – our ride towards Florida and
the Sea of Monsters.
***
Riding the hippocampus was even easier than riding a pegasus. We zipped along
with the wind in our faces, speeding through the waves so smoothly and steadily
I hardly needed to hold on at all.
As we got closer to the cruise ship, I realized just how huge it was. I felt as
though I were looking up at a building in Manhattan. The white hull was at least
ten storeys tall, topped with another dozen levels of decks with brightly lit
balconies and portholes. The ship’s name was painted just above the bow line in
black letters, lit with a spotlight. It took me a few seconds to decipher it:
PRINCESS ANDROMEDA
Attached to the bow was a huge masthead – a three-storey-tall woman wearing a
white Greek chiton, sculpted to look as if she were chained to the front of the
ship. She was young and beautiful, with flowing black hair, but her expression
was one of absolute terror. Why anybody would want a screaming princess on
the front of their vacation ship, I had no idea.
I remembered the myth about Andromeda and how she had been chained to a
rock by her own parents as a sacrifice to a sea monster. Maybe she’d got too
many Fs on her report card or something. Anyway, my namesake, Perseus, had
saved her just in time and turned the sea monster to stone using the head of
Medusa.
That Perseus always won. That’s why my mom had named me after him, even
though he was a son of Zeus and I was a son of Poseidon. The original Perseus
was one of the only heroes in the Greek myths who got a happy ending. The
others died – betrayed, mauled, mutilated, poisoned, or cursed by the gods. My
mom hoped I would inherit Perseus’s luck. Judging by how my life was going so
far, I wasn’t really optimistic.
‘How do we get aboard?’ Annabeth shouted over the noise of the waves, but
the hippocampi seemed to know what we needed. They skimmed along the
starboard side of the ship, riding easily through its huge wake, and pulled up
next to a service ladder riveted to the side of the hull.
‘You first,’ I told Annabeth.
She slung her duffel bag over her shoulder and grabbed the bottom rung. Once
she’d hoisted herself onto the ladder, her hippocampus whinnied a farewell and
dived underwater. Annabeth began to climb. I let her get a few rungs up, then
followed her.
Finally it was just Tyson in the water. His hippocampus was treating him to
360° aerials and backwards ollies, and Tyson was laughing so hysterically, the
sound echoed up the side of the ship.
‘Tyson, shhh!’ I said. ‘Come on, big guy!’
‘Can’t we take Rainbow?’ he asked, his smile fading.
I stared at him. ‘Rainbow?’
The hippocampus whinnied as if he liked his new name.
‘Um, we have to go,’ I said. ‘Rainbow … well, he can’t climb ladders.’
Tyson sniffled. He buried his face in the hippocampus’s mane. ‘I will miss
you, Rainbow!’
The hippocampus made a neighing sound I could’ve sworn was crying.
‘Maybe we’ll see him again sometime,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, please!’ Tyson said, perking up immediately. ‘Tomorrow!’
I didn’t make any promises, but I finally convinced Tyson to say his farewells
and grab hold of the ladder. With a final sad whinny, Rainbow the hippocampus
did a backflip and dived into the sea.
The ladder led to a maintenance deck stacked with yellow lifeboats. There was a
set of locked double doors, which Annabeth managed to prise open with her
knife and a fair amount of cursing in Ancient Greek.
I figured we’d have to sneak around, being stowaways and all, but after
checking a few corridors and peering over a balcony into a huge central
promenade lined with closed shops, I began to realize there was nobody to hide
from. I mean, sure it was the middle of the night, but we walked half the length
of the boat and met no one. We passed forty or fifty cabin doors and heard no
sound behind any of them.
‘It’s a ghost ship,’ I murmured.
‘No,’ Tyson said, fiddling with the strap of his duffel bag. ‘Bad smell.’
Annabeth frowned. ‘I don’t smell anything.’
‘Cyclopes are like satyrs,’ I said. ‘They can smell monsters. Isn’t that right,
Tyson?’
He nodded nervously. Now that we were away from Camp Half-Blood, the
Mist had distorted his face again. Unless I concentrated very hard, it seemed that
he had two eyes instead of one.
‘Okay,’ Annabeth said. ‘So what exactly do you smell?’
‘Something bad,’ Tyson answered.
‘Great,’ Annabeth grumbled. ‘That clears it up.’
We came outside on the swimming pool level. There were rows of empty
deckchairs and a bar closed off with a chain curtain. The water in the pool
glowed eerily, sloshing back and forth from the motion of the ship.
Above us fore and aft were more levels – a climbing wall, a pitch-and-putt
golf course, a revolving restaurant, but no sign of life.
And yet … I sensed something familiar. Something dangerous. I had the
feeling that if I weren’t so tired and burned out on adrenalin from our long night,
I might be able to put a name to what was wrong.
‘We need a hiding place,’ I said. ‘Somewhere safe to sleep.’
‘Sleep,’ Annabeth agreed wearily.
We explored a few more corridors until we found an empty suite on the ninth
level. The door was open, which struck me as weird. There was a basket of
chocolate goodies on the table, an iced-down bottle of sparkling cider on the
nightstand and a mint on the pillow with a handwritten note that said: Enjoy your
cruise!
We opened our duffel bags for the first time and found that Hermes really had
thought of everything – extra clothes, toiletries, camp rations, an airtight bag full
of cash, a leather pouch full of golden drachmas. He’d even managed to pack
Tyson’s oilcloth with his tools and metal bits, and Annabeth’s cap of invisibility,
which made them both feel a lot better.
‘I’ll be next door,’ Annabeth said. ‘You guys don’t drink or eat anything.’
‘You think this place is enchanted?’
She frowned. ‘I don’t know. Something isn’t right. Just … be careful.’
We locked our doors.
Tyson crashed on the couch. He tinkered for a few minutes on his
metalworking project – which he still wouldn’t show me – but soon enough he
was yawning. He wrapped up his oilcloth and passed out.
I lay on the bed and stared out of the porthole. I thought I heard voices out in
the hallway, like whispering. I knew that couldn’t be. We’d walked all over the
ship and had seen nobody. But the voices kept me awake. They reminded me of
my trip to the Underworld – the way the spirits of the dead sounded as they
drifted past.
Finally my weariness got the best of me. I fell asleep … and had my worst
dream yet.
I was standing in a cavern at the edge of an enormous pit. I knew the place too
well. The entrance to Tartarus. And I recognized the cold laugh that echoed from
the darkness below.
If it isn’t the young hero. The voice was like a knife blade scraping across
stone. On his way to another great victory.
I wanted to shout at Kronos to leave me alone. I wanted to draw Riptide and
strike him down. But I couldn’t move. And even if I could, how could I kill
something that had already been destroyed – chopped to pieces and cast into
eternal darkness?
Don’t let me stop you, the titan said. Perhaps this time, when you fail, you’ll
wonder if it’s worthwhile slaving for the gods. How exactly has your father
shown his appreciation lately?
His laughter filled the cavern, and suddenly the scene changed.
It was a different cave – Grover’s bedroom prison in the Cyclops’s lair.
Grover was sitting at the loom in his soiled wedding dress, madly unravelling
the threads of the unfinished bridal train.
‘Honeypie!’ the monster shouted from behind the boulder.
Grover yelped and began weaving the threads back together.
The room shook as the boulder was pushed aside. Looming in the doorway
was a Cyclops so huge he made Tyson look vertically challenged. He had jagged
yellow teeth and gnarled hands as big as my whole body. He wore a faded purple
T-shirt that said WORLD SHEEP EXPO 2001. He must’ve been at least five
metres tall, but the most startling thing was his enormous milky eye, scarred and
webbed with cataracts. If he wasn’t completely blind, he had to be pretty darn
close.
‘What are you doing?’ the monster demanded.
‘Nothing!’ Grover said in his falsetto voice. ‘Just weaving my bridal train, as
you can see.’
The Cyclops stuck one hand into the room and groped around until he found
the loom. He pawed at the cloth. ‘It hasn’t got any longer!’
‘Oh, um, yes it has, dearest. See? I’ve added at least three centimetres.’
‘Too many delays!’ the monster bellowed. Then he sniffed the air. ‘You smell
good! Like goats!’
‘Oh.’ Grover forced a weak giggle. ‘Do you like it? It’s Eau de Chévre. I wore
it just for you.’
‘Mmmm!’ The Cyclops bared his pointed teeth. ‘Good enough to eat!’
‘Oh, you’re such a flirt!’
‘No more delays!’
‘But dear, I’m not done!’
‘Tomorrow!’
‘No, no. Ten more days.’
‘Five!’
‘Oh, well, seven then. If you insist.’
‘Seven! That is less than five, right?’
‘Certainly. Oh yes.’
The monster grumbled, still not happy with his deal, but he left Grover to his
weaving and rolled the boulder back into place.
Grover closed his eyes and took a shaky breath, trying to calm his nerves.
‘Hurry, Percy,’ he muttered. ‘Please, please, please!’
I woke to a ship’s whistle and a voice on the intercom – some guy with an
Australian accent who sounded way too happy.
‘Good morning, passengers! We’ll be at sea all day today. Excellent weather
for the poolside mambo party! Don’t forget million-dollar bingo in the Kraken
Lounge at one o’clock, and for our special guests, disembowelling practice on
the Promenade!’
I sat up in bed. ‘What did he say?’
Tyson groaned, still half asleep. He was lying face down on the couch, his feet
so far over the edge they were in the bathroom. ‘The happy man said … bowling
practice?’
I hoped he was right, but then there was an urgent knock on the suite’s interior
door. Annabeth stuck her head in – her blonde hair in a rat’s nest.
‘Disembowelling practice?’
Once we were all dressed, we ventured out into the ship and were surprised to
see other people. A dozen senior citizens were heading to breakfast. A dad was
taking his kids to the pool for a morning swim. Crew members in crisp white
uniforms strolled the deck, tipping their hats to the passengers.
Nobody asked who we were. Nobody paid us much attention. But there was
something wrong.
As the family of swimmers passed us, the dad told his kids, ‘We are on a
cruise. We are having fun.’
‘Yes,’ his three kids said in unison, their expressions blank. ‘We are having a
blast. We will swim in the pool.’
They wandered off.
‘Good morning,’ a crew member told us, his eyes glazed. ‘We are all enjoying
ourselves aboard the Princess Andromeda. Have a nice day.’ He drifted away.
‘Percy, this is weird,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘They’re all in some kind of
trance.’
Then we passed a cafeteria and saw our first monster. It was a hellhound – a
black mastiff with its front paws up on the buffet counter and its muzzle buried
in the scrambled eggs. It must’ve been young, because it was small compared to
most – no bigger than a grizzly bear. Still, my blood turned cold. I’d almost got
killed by one of those before.
The weird thing was, a middle-aged couple was standing in the buffet queue
right behind the devil dog, patiently waiting their turn for the eggs. They didn’t
seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.
‘Not hungry any more,’ Tyson murmured.
Before Annabeth or I could reply, a reptilian voice came from down the
corridor, ‘Ssssix more joined yesssterday.’
Annabeth gestured frantically towards the nearest hiding place – the women’s
room – and all three of us ducked inside. I was so freaked out it didn’t even
occur to me to be embarrassed.
Something – or more like two somethings – slithered past the restroom door,
making sounds like sandpaper against the carpet.
‘Yesss,’ a second reptilian voice said. ‘He drawssss them. Ssssoon we will be
sssstrong.’
The things slithered into the cafeteria with a cold hissing that might have been
snake laughter.
Annabeth looked at me. ‘We have to get out of here.’
‘You think I want to be in the girls’ restroom?’
‘I mean the ship, Percy! We have to get off the ship.’
‘Smells bad,’ Tyson agreed. ‘And dogs eat all the eggs. Annabeth is right. We
must leave the restroom and ship.’
I shuddered. If Annabeth and Tyson were actually agreeing about something, I
figured I’d better listen.
Then I heard another voice outside – one that chilled me worse than any
monster’s.
‘– only a matter of time. Don’t push me, Agrius!’
It was Luke, beyond a doubt. I could never forget his voice.
‘I’m not pushing you!’ another guy growled. His voice was deeper and even
angrier than Luke’s. ‘I’m just saying, if this gamble doesn’t pay off –’
‘It’ll pay off, Luke snapped. ‘They’ll take the bait. Now, come, we’ve got to
get to the admiralty suite and check on the casket.’
Their voices receded down the corridor.
Tyson whimpered. ‘Leave now?’
Annabeth and I exchanged looks and came to a silent agreement.
‘We can’t,’ I told Tyson.
‘We have to find out what Luke is up to,’ Annabeth agreed. ‘And if possible,
we’re going to beat him up, bind him in chains and drag him to Mount
Olympus.’
9
I Have the Worst Family Reunion Ever
Annabeth volunteered to go alone since she had the cap of invisibility, but I
convinced her it was too dangerous. Either we all went together, or nobody went.
‘Nobody!’ Tyson voted. ‘Please?’
But in the end he came along, nervously chewing on his huge fingernails. We
stopped at our cabin long enough to gather our stuff. We figured whatever
happened, we would not be staying another night aboard the zombie cruise ship,
even if they did have million-dollar bingo. I made sure Riptide was in my pocket
and the vitamins and flask from Hermes were at the top of my bag. I didn’t want
Tyson to carry everything, but he insisted, and Annabeth told me not to worry
about it. Tyson could carry three full duffel bags over his shoulder as easily as I
could carry a backpack.
We sneaked through the corridors, following the ship’s YOU ARE HERE
signs towards the admiralty suite. Annabeth scouted ahead invisibly. We hid
whenever someone passed by, but most of the people we saw were just glassyeyed zombie passengers.
As we came up the stairs to deck thirteen, where the admiralty suite was
supposed to be, Annabeth hissed, ‘Hide!’ and shoved us into a supply closet.
I heard a couple of guys coming down the hall.
‘You see that Aethiopian drakon in the cargo hold?’ one of them said.
The other laughed. ‘Yeah, it’s awesome.’
Annabeth was still invisible, but she squeezed my arm hard. I got a feeling I
should know that second guy’s voice.
‘I hear they got two more coming,’ the familiar voice said. ‘They keep
arriving at this rate, oh, man – no contest!’
The voices faded down the corridor.
‘That was Chris Rodriguez!’ Annabeth took off her cap and turned visible.
‘You remember – from Cabin Eleven.’
I sort of recalled Chris from the summer before. He was one of those
undetermined campers who got stuck in the Hermes cabin because his Olympian
dad or mom never claimed him. Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t
seen Chris at camp this summer. ‘What’s another half-blood doing here?’
Annabeth shook her head, clearly troubled.
We kept going down the corridor. I didn’t need maps any more to know I was
getting close to Luke. I sensed something cold and unpleasant – the presence of
evil.
‘Percy.’ Annabeth stopped suddenly. ‘Look.’
She stood in front of a glass wall looking down into the multistorey canyon
that ran through the middle of the ship. At the bottom was the Promenade – a
mall full of shops – but that’s not what had caught Annabeth’s attention.
A group of monsters had assembled in front of the candy store: a dozen
Laistrygonian giants like the ones who’d attacked me with dodgeballs, two
hellhounds and a few even stranger creatures – humanoid females with twin
serpent tails instead of legs.
‘Scythian Dracaenae,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘Dragon women.’
The monsters made a semicircle around a young guy in Greek armour who
was hacking on a straw dummy. A lump formed in my throat when I realized the
dummy was wearing an orange Camp Half-Blood T-shirt. As we watched, the
guy in armour stabbed the dummy through its belly and ripped upwards. Straw
flew everywhere. The monsters cheered and howled.
Annabeth stepped away from the window. Her face was ashen.
‘Come on,’ I told her, trying to sound braver than I felt. ‘The sooner we find
Luke the better.’
At the end of the hallway were double oak doors that looked like they must
lead somewhere important. When we were ten metres away, Tyson stopped.
‘Voices inside.’
‘You can hear that far?’ I asked.
Tyson closed his eye like he was concentrating hard. Then his voice changed,
becoming a husky approximation of Luke’s. ‘– the prophecy ourselves. The
fools won’t know which way to turn.’
Before I could react, Tyson’s voice changed again, becoming deeper and
gruffer, like the other guy we’d heard talking to Luke outside the cafeteria. ‘You
really think the old horseman is gone for good?’
Tyson laughed Luke’s laugh. ‘They can’t trust him. Not with the skeletons in
his closet. The poisoning of the tree was the final straw.’
Annabeth shivered. ‘Stop that, Tyson! How do you do that? It’s creepy.’
Tyson opened his eye and looked puzzled. ‘Just listening.’
‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘What else are they saying?’
Tyson closed his eye again.
He hissed in the gruff man’s voice, ‘Quiet!’ Then Luke’s voice, whispering,
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ Tyson said in the gruff voice. ‘Right outside.’
Too late, I realized what was happening.
I just had time to say, ‘Run!’ when the doors of the stateroom burst open and
there was Luke, flanked by two hairy giants armed with javelins, their bronze
tips aimed right at our chests.
‘Well,’ Luke said with a crooked smile. ‘If it isn’t my two favourite cousins.
Come right in.’
The stateroom was beautiful, and it was horrible.
The beautiful part: huge windows curved along the back wall, looking out
over the stern of the ship. Green sea and blue sky stretched all the way to the
horizon. A Persian rug covered the floor. Two plush sofas occupied the middle of
the room, with a canopied bed in one corner and a mahogany dining table in the
other. The table was loaded with food: pizza boxes, bottles of soda and a stack of
roast beef sandwiches on a silver platter.
The horrible part: on a velvet dais at the back of the room lay a three-metrelong golden casket. A sarcophagus, engraved with Ancient Greek scenes of cities
in flames and heroes dying grisly deaths. Despite the sunlight streaming through
the windows, the casket made the whole room feel cold.
‘Well,’ Luke said, spreading his arms proudly. ‘A little nicer than Cabin
Eleven, huh?’
He’d changed since last summer. Instead of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt, he
wore a button-down shirt, khaki trousers and leather loafers. His sandy hair,
which used to be so unruly, was now clipped short. He looked like an evil male
model, showing off what the fashionable college-age villain was wearing to
Harvard this year.
He still had the scar under his eye – a jagged white line from his battle with a
dragon. And propped against the sofa was his magical sword, Backbiter, glinting
strangely with its half steel, half Celestial bronze blade that could kill both
mortals and monsters.
‘Sit,’ he told us. He waved his hand and three dining chairs scooted
themselves into the centre of the room.
None of us sat.
Luke’s large friends were still pointing their javelins at us. They looked like
twins, but they weren’t human. They stood about two and a half metres tall, for
one thing, and wore only blue jeans, probably because their enormous chests
were already shag-carpeted with thick brown fur. They had claws for fingernails,
feet like paws. Their noses were snoutlike, and their teeth were all pointed
canines.
‘Where are my manners?’ Luke said smoothly. ‘These are my assistants,
Agrius and Oreius. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’
I said nothing. Despite the javelins pointed at me, it wasn’t the bear twins who
scared me.
I’d imagined meeting Luke again many times since he’d tried to kill me last
summer. I’d pictured myself boldly standing up to him, challenging him to a
duel. But now that we were face to face, I could barely stop my hands from
shaking.
‘You don’t know Agrius and Oreius’s story?’ Luke asked. ‘Their mother …
well, it’s sad, really. Aphrodite ordered the young woman to fall in love. She
refused and ran to Artemis for help. Artemis let her become one of her maiden
huntresses, but Aphrodite got her revenge. She bewitched the young woman into
falling in love with a bear. When Artemis found out, she abandoned the girl in
disgust. Typical of the gods, wouldn’t you say? They fight with one another and
the poor humans get caught in the middle. The girl’s twin sons here, Agrius and
Oreius, have no love for Olympus. They like half-bloods well enough, though…’
‘For lunch,’ Agrius growled. His gruff voice was the one I’d heard talking
with Luke earlier.
‘Hehe! Hehe!’ His brother Oreius laughed, licking his fur-lined lips. He kept
laughing like he was having an asthmatic fit until Luke and Agrius both stared at
him.
‘Shut up, you idiot!’ Agrius growled. ‘Go punish yourself!’
Oreius whimpered. He trudged over to the corner of the room, slumped onto a
stool, and banged his forehead against the dining table, making the silver plates
rattle.
Luke acted like this was perfectly normal behaviour. He made himself
comfortable on the sofa and propped his feet up on the coffee table. ‘Well, Percy,
we let you survive another year. I hope you appreciated it. How’s your mom?
How’s school?’
‘You poisoned Thalia’s tree.’
Luke sighed. ‘Right to the point, eh? Okay, sure I poisoned the tree. So what?’
‘How could you?’ Annabeth sounded so angry I thought she’d explode.
‘Thalia saved your life! Our lives! How could you dishonour her –’
‘I didn’t dishonour her!’ Luke snapped. ‘The gods dishonoured her, Annabeth!
If Thalia were alive, she’d be on my side.’
‘Liar!’
‘If you knew what was coming, you’d understand –’
‘I understand you want to destroy the camp!’ she yelled. ‘You’re a monster!’
Luke shook his head. ‘The gods have blinded you. Can’t you imagine a world
without them, Annabeth? What good is that ancient history you study? Three
thousand years of baggage! The West is rotten to the core. It has to be destroyed.
Join me! We can start the world anew. We could use your intelligence,
Annabeth.’
‘Because you have none of your own!’
His eyes narrowed. ‘I know you, Annabeth. You deserve better than tagging
along on some hopeless quest to save the camp. Half-Blood Hill will be overrun
by monsters within the month. The heroes who survive will have no choice but
to join us or be hunted to extinction. You really want to be on a losing team …
with company like this?’ Luke pointed at Tyson.
‘Hey!’ I said.
‘Travelling with a Cyclops,’ Luke chided. ‘Talk about dishonouring Thalia’s
memory! I’m surprised at you, Annabeth. You of all people –’
‘Stop it!’ she shouted.
I didn’t know what Luke was talking about, but Annabeth buried her head in
her hands like she was about to cry.
‘Leave her alone,’ I said. ‘And leave Tyson out of this.’
Luke laughed. ‘Oh, yeah, I heard. Your father claimed him.’
I must have looked surprised, because Luke smiled. ‘Yes, Percy, I know all
about that. And about your plan to find the Fleece. What were those coordinates,
again … thirty, thirty-one, seventy-five, twelve? You see, I still have friends at
camp who keep me posted.’
‘Spies, you mean.’
He shrugged. ‘How many insults from your father can you stand, Percy? You
think he’s grateful to you? You think Poseidon cares for you any more than he
cares for this monster?’
Tyson clenched his fists and made a rumbling sound down in his throat.
Luke just chuckled. ‘The gods are so using you, Percy. Do you have any idea
what’s in store for you if you reach your sixteenth birthday? Has Chiron even
told you the prophecy?’
I wanted to get in Luke’s face and tell him off, but as usual, he knew just how
to throw me off balance.
Sixteenth birthday?
I mean, I knew Chiron had received a prophecy from the Oracle many years
ago. I knew part of it was about me. But, if I reached my sixteenth birthday? I
didn’t like the sound of that.
‘I know what I need to know,’ I managed. ‘Like, who my enemies are.’
‘Then you’re a fool.’
Tyson smashed the nearest dining chair to splinters. ‘Percy is not a fool!’
Before I could stop him, he charged Luke. His fists came down towards
Luke’s head – a double overhead blow that would’ve knocked a hole in titanium
– but the bear twins intercepted. They each caught one of Tyson’s arms and
stopped him cold. They pushed him back and Tyson stumbled. He fell to the
carpet so hard the deck shook.
‘Too bad, Cyclops,’ Luke said. ‘Looks like my grizzly friends together are
more than a match for your strength. Maybe I should let them –’
‘Luke,’ I cut in. ‘Listen to me. Your father sent us.’
His face turned the colour of pepperoni. ‘Don’t – even – mention him.’
‘He told us to take this boat. I thought it was just for a ride, but he sent us here
to find you. He told me he won’t give up on you, no matter how angry you are.’
‘Angry?’ Luke roared. ‘Give up on me? He abandoned me, Percy! I want
Olympus destroyed! Every throne crushed to rubble! You tell Hermes it’s going
to happen, too. Each time a half-blood joins us, the Olympians grow weaker and
we grow stronger. He grows stronger.’ Luke pointed to the gold sarcophagus.
The box creeped me out, but I was determined not to show it. ‘So?’ I
demanded. ‘What’s so special…’
Then it hit me, what might be inside the sarcophagus. The temperature in the
room seemed to drop twenty degrees. ‘Whoa, you don’t mean –’
‘He is re-forming,’ Luke said. ‘Little by little, we’re calling his life force out
of the pit. With every recruit who pledges our cause, another small piece appears
–’
‘That’s disgusting!’ Annabeth said.
Luke sneered at her. ‘Your mother was born from Zeus’s split skull, Annabeth.
I wouldn’t talk. Soon there will be enough of the titan lord so that we can make
him whole again. We will piece together a new body for him, a work worthy of
the forges of Hephaestus.’
‘You’re insane,’ Annabeth said.
‘Join us and you’ll be rewarded. We have powerful friends, sponsors rich
enough to buy this cruise ship and much more. Percy, your mother will never
have to work again. You can buy her a mansion. You can have power, fame –
whatever you want. Annabeth, you can realize your dream of being an architect.
You can build a monument to last a thousand years. A temple to the lords of the
next age!’
‘Go to Tartarus,’ she said.
Luke sighed. ‘A shame.’
He picked up something that looked like a TV remote and pressed a red
button. Within seconds the door of the stateroom opened and two uniformed
crew members came in, armed with nightsticks. They had the same glassy-eyed
look as the other mortals I’d seen, but I had a feeling this wouldn’t make them
any less dangerous in a fight.
‘Ah, good, security,’ Luke said. ‘I’m afraid we have some stowaways.’
‘Yes, sir,’ they said dreamily.
Luke turned to Oreius. ‘It’s time to feed the Aethiopian drakon. Take these
fools below and show them how it’s done.’
Oreius grinned stupidly. ‘Hehe! Hehe!’
‘Let me go, too,’ Agrius grumbled. ‘My brother is worthless. That Cyclops –’
‘Is no threat,’ Luke said. He glanced back at the golden casket, as if something
were troubling him. ‘Agrius, stay here. We have important matters to discuss.’
‘But –’
‘Oreius, don’t fail me. Stay in the hold to make sure the drakon is properly
fed.’
Oreius prodded us with his javelin and herded us out of the stateroom,
followed by the two human security guards.
As I walked down the corridor with Orieus’s javelin poking me in the back, I
thought about what Luke had said – that the bear twins together were a match
for Tyson’s strength. But maybe separately…
We exited the corridor amidships and walked across an open deck lined with
lifeboats. I knew the ship well enough to realize this would be our last look at
sunlight. Once we got to the other side, we’d take the elevator down into the
hold, and that would be it.
I looked at Tyson and said, ‘Now.’
Thank the gods, he understood. He turned and smacked Oreius ten metres
backwards into the swimming pool, right into the middle of the zombie tourist
family.
‘Ah!’ the kids yelled in unison. ‘We are not having a blast in the pool!’
One of the security guards drew his nightstick, but Annabeth knocked the
wind out of him with a well-placed kick. The other guard ran for the nearest
alarm box.
‘Stop him!’ Annabeth yelled, but it was too late.
Just before I banged him on the head with a deckchair, he hit the alarm.
Red lights flashed. Sirens wailed.
‘Lifeboat!’ I yelled.
We ran for the nearest one.
By the time we got the cover off, monsters and more security men were
swarming the deck, pushing aside tourists and waiters with trays of tropical
drinks. A guy in Greek armour drew his sword and charged, but slipped in a
puddle of piña colada. Laistrygonian archers assembled on the deck above us,
notching arrows in their enormous bows.
‘How do you launch this thing?’ screamed Annabeth.
A hellhound leaped at me, but Tyson slammed it aside with a fire extinguisher.
‘Get in!’ I yelled. I uncapped Riptide and slashed the first volley of arrows out
of the air. Any second we would be overwhelmed.
The lifeboat was hanging over the side of the ship, high above the water.
Annabeth and Tyson were having no luck with the release pulley.
I jumped in beside them.
‘Hold on!’ I yelled, and I cut the ropes.
A shower of arrows whistled over our heads as we free-fell towards the ocean.
10
We Hitch a Ride with Dead Confederates
‘Flask!’ I screamed as we hurtled towards the water.
‘What? Annabeth must’ve thought I’d lost my mind. She was holding on to
the boat straps for dear life, her hair flying straight up like a torch.
But Tyson understood. He managed to open my duffel bag and take out
Hermes’s magical flask without losing his grip on it or the boat.
Arrows and javelins whistled past us.
I grabbed the Flask and hoped I was doing the right thing. ‘Hang on!’
‘I am hanging on!’ Annabeth yelled.
‘Tighter!’
I hooked my feet under the boat’s inflatable bench, and, as Tyson grabbed
Annabeth and me by the backs of our shirts, I gave the Flask cap a quarter turn.
Instantly, a white sheet of wind jetted out of the flask and propelled us
sideways, turning our downward plummet into a forty-five-degree crash landing.
The wind seemed to laugh as it shot from the flask, like it was glad to be free.
As we hit the ocean, we bumped once, twice, skipping like a stone, then we were
whizzing along like a speed boat, salt spray in our faces and nothing but sea
ahead.
I heard a wail of outrage from the ship behind us, but we were already out of
weapon range. The Princess Andromeda faded to the size of a white toy boat in
the distance, and then it was gone.
As we raced over the sea, Annabeth and I tried to send an Iris-message to
Chiron. We figured it was important we let somebody know what Luke was
doing, and we didn’t know who else to trust.
The wind from the Flask stirred up a nice sea spray that made a rainbow in the
sunlight – perfect for an Iris-message – but our connection was still poor. When
Annabeth threw a gold drachma into the mist and prayed for the rainbow
goddess to show us Chiron, his face appeared all right, but there was some kind
of weird strobe light flashing in the background and rock music blaring, like he
was at a dance club.
We told him about sneaking away from camp, and Luke and the Princess
Andromeda and the golden box for Kronos’s remains, but between the noise on
his end and the rushing wind and water on our end, I’m not sure how much he
heard.
‘Percy,’ Chiron yelled, ‘you have to watch out for –’
His voice was drowned out by loud shouting behind him – a bunch of voices
whooping it up like Comanche warriors.
‘What?’ I yelled.
‘Curse my relatives!’ Chiron ducked as a plate flew over his head and
shattered somewhere out of sight. ‘Annabeth, you shouldn’t have let Percy leave
camp! But if you do get the Fleece –’
‘Yeah, baby!’ somebody behind Chiron yelled. ‘Woo-hoooooo!’
The music got cranked up, subwoofers so loud it made our boat vibrate.
‘– Miami,’ Chiron was yelling. ‘I’ll try to keep watch –’
Our misty screen smashed apart like someone on the other side had thrown a
bottle at it, and Chiron was gone.
An hour later we spotted land – a long stretch of beach lined with high-rise
hotels. The water became crowded with fishing boats and tankers. A coastguard
cruiser passed on our starboard side, then turned like it wanted a second look. I
guess it isn’t every day they see a yellow lifeboat with no engine going a
hundred knots an hour, manned by three kids.
‘That’s Virginia Beach!’ Annabeth said as we approached the shoreline. ‘Oh
my gods, how did the Princess Andromeda travel so far overnight? That’s like –’
‘Five hundred and thirty nautical miles,’ I said.
She stared at me. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I – I’m not sure.’
Annabeth thought for a moment. ‘Percy, what’s our position?’
‘Thirty-six degrees, forty-four minutes north, seventy-six degrees, two
minutes west,’ I said immediately. Then I shook my head. ‘Whoa. How did I
know that?’
‘Because of your dad,’ Annabeth guessed. ‘When you’re at sea, you have
perfect bearings. That is so cool.’
I wasn’t sure about that. I didn’t want to be a human GPS unit. But before I
could say anything, Tyson tapped my shoulder. ‘Other boat is coming.’
I looked back. The coastguard vessel was definitely on our tail now. Its lights
were flashing and it was gaining speed.
‘We can’t let them catch us,’ I said. ‘They’ll ask too many questions.’
‘Keep going into Chesapeake Bay,’ Annabeth said. ‘I know a place we can
hide.’
I didn’t ask what she meant, or how she knew the area so well. I risked
loosening the Flask cap a little more, and a fresh burst of wind sent us rocketing
around the northern tip of Virginia Beach into Chesapeake Bay. The coastguard
boat fell further and further behind. We didn’t slow down until the shores of the
bay narrowed on either side, and I realized we’d entered the mouth of a river.
I could feel the change from salt water to fresh water. Suddenly I was tired
and frazzled, like I was coming down off a sugar high. I didn’t know where I
was any more, or which way to steer the boat. It was a good thing Annabeth was
directing me.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Past that sandbar.’
We veered into a swampy area choked with marsh grass. I beached the
lifeboat at the foot of a giant cypress.
Vine-covered trees loomed above us. Insects chirred in the woods. The air was
muggy and hot, and steam curled off the river. Basically, it wasn’t Manhattan,
and I didn’t like it.
‘Come on,’ Annabeth said. ‘It’s just down the bank.’
‘What is?’ I asked.
‘Just follow.’ She grabbed a duffel bag. ‘And we’d better cover the boat. We
don’t want to draw attention.’
After burying the lifeboat with branches, Tyson and I followed Annabeth
along the shore, our feet sinking in red mud. A snake slithered past my shoe and
disappeared into the grass.
‘Not a good place,’ Tyson said. He swatted the mosquitoes that were forming
a buffet queue on his arm.
After another few minutes, Annabeth said, ‘Here.’
All I saw was a patch of brambles. Then Annabeth moved aside a woven
circle of branches, like a door, and I realized I was looking into a camouflaged
shelter.
The inside was big enough for three, even with Tyson being the third. The
walls were woven from plant material, like a Native American hut, but they
looked pretty waterproof. Stacked in the corner was everything you could want
for a campout – sleeping bags, blankets, an ice chest and a kerosene lamp. There
were demigod provisions, too – bronze javelin tips, a quiver full of arrows, an
extra sword and a box of ambrosia. The place smelled musty, like it had been
vacant for a long time.
‘A half-blood hideout.’ I looked at Annabeth in awe. ‘You made this place?’
‘Thalia and I,’ she said quietly. ‘And Luke.’
That shouldn’t have bothered me. I mean, I knew Thalia and Luke had taken
care of Annabeth when she was little. I knew the three of them had been
runaways together, hiding from monsters, surviving on their own before Grover
found them and tried to get them to Half-Blood Hill. But whenever Annabeth
talked about the time she’d spent with them, I kind of felt … I don’t know.
Uncomfortable?
No. That’s not the word.
The word was jealous.
‘So…’ I said. ‘You don’t think Luke will look for us here?’
She shook her head. ‘We made a dozen safe houses like this. I doubt Luke
even remembers where they are. Or cares.’
She threw herself down on the blankets and started going through her duffel
bag. Her body language made it pretty clear she didn’t want to talk.
‘Um, Tyson?’ I said. ‘Would you mind scouting around outside? Like, look for
a wilderness convenience store or something?’
‘Convenience store?’
‘Yeah, for snacks. Powdered doughnuts or something. Just don’t go too far.’
‘Powdered doughnuts,’ Tyson said earnestly. ‘I will look for powdered
doughnuts in the wilderness.’ He headed outside and started calling, ‘Here,
doughnuts!’
Once he was gone, I sat down across from Annabeth. ‘Hey, I’m sorry about,
you know, seeing Luke.’
‘It’s not your fault.’ She unsheathed her knife and started cleaning the blade
with a rag.
‘He let us go too easily,’ I said.
I hoped I’d been imagining it, but Annabeth nodded. ‘I was thinking the same
thing. What we overheard him say about a gamble, and “they’ll take the bait” …
I think he was talking about us.’
‘The Fleece is the bait? Or Grover?’
She studied the edge of her knife. ‘I don’t know, Percy. Maybe he wants the
Fleece for himself. Maybe he’s hoping we’ll do the hard work and then he can
steal it from us. I just can’t believe he would poison the tree.’
‘What did he mean,’ I asked, ‘that Thalia would’ve been on his side?’
‘He’s wrong.’
‘You don’t sound sure.’
Annabeth glared at me, and I started to wish I hadn’t asked her about this
while she was holding a knife.
‘Percy, you know who you remind me of most? Thalia. You guys are so much
alike it’s scary. I mean, either you would’ve been best friends or you would’ve
strangled each other.’
‘Let’s go with “best friends.” ’
‘Thalia got angry with her dad sometimes. So do you. Would you turn against
Olympus because of that?’
I stared at the quiver of arrows in the corner. ‘No.’
‘Okay, then. Neither would she. Luke’s wrong.’ Annabeth stuck her knife
blade into the dirt.
I wanted to ask her about the prophecy Luke had mentioned and what it had to
do with my sixteenth birthday. But I figured she wouldn’t tell me. Chiron had
made it pretty clear that I wasn’t allowed to hear it until the gods decided
otherwise.
‘So what did Luke mean about Cyclopes?’ I asked. ‘He said you of all people
–’
‘I know what he said. He … he was talking about the real reason Thalia died.’
I waited, not sure what to say.
Annabeth drew a shaky breath. ‘You can never trust a Cyclops, Percy. Six
years ago, on the night Grover was leading us to Half-Blood Hill –’
She was interrupted when the door of the hut creaked open. Tyson crawled in.
‘Powdered doughnuts!’ he said proudly, holding up a pastry box.
Annabeth stared at him. ‘Where did you get that? We’re in the middle of the
wilderness. There’s nothing around for –’
‘Fifteen metres,’ Tyson said. ‘Monster Doughnut shop – just over the hill!’
‘This is bad,’ Annabeth muttered.
We were crouching behind a tree, staring at the doughnut shop in the middle
of the woods. It looked brand new, with brightly lit windows, a parking area and
a little road leading off into the forest, but there was nothing else around, and no
cars parked in the lot. We could see one employee reading a magazine behind the
cash register. That was it. On the store’s awning, in huge black letters that even I
could read, it said:
MONSTER DOUGHNUT
A cartoon ogre was taking a bite out of the O in MONSTER. The place smelled
good, like fresh-baked chocolate doughnuts.
‘This shouldn’t be here,’ Annabeth whispered. ‘It’s wrong.’
‘What?’ I asked. ‘It’s a doughnut shop.’
‘Shhh!’
‘Why are we whispering? Tyson went in and bought a dozen. Nothing
happened to him.’
‘He’s a monster.’
‘Aw, c’mon, Annabeth. Monster Doughnut doesn’t mean monsters! It’s a
chain. We’ve got them in New York.’
‘A chain,’ she agreed. ‘And don’t you think it’s strange that one appeared
immediately after you told Tyson to get doughnuts? Right here in the middle of
the woods?’
I thought about it. It did seem a little weird, but, I mean, doughnut shops
weren’t real high on my list of sinister forces.
‘It could be a nest,’ Annabeth explained.
Tyson whimpered. I doubt he understood what Annabeth was saying any
better than I did, but her tone was making him nervous. He’d ploughed through
half a dozen doughnuts from his box and was getting powdered sugar all over his
face.
‘A nest for what?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t you ever wondered how franchise stores pop up so fast?’ she asked.
‘One day there’s nothing and then the next day – boom, there’s a new burger
place or a coffee shop or whatever? First a single store, then two, then four –
exact replicas spreading across the country?’
‘Um, no. Never thought about it.’
‘Percy, some of the chains multiply so fast because all their locations are
magically linked to the life force of a monster. Some children of Hermes figured
out how to do it back in the 1950s. They breed –’
She froze.
‘What?’ I demanded. ‘They breed what?’
‘No – sudden – moves,’ Annabeth said, like her life depended on it. ‘Very
slowly, turn around.’
Then I heard it: a scraping noise, like something large dragging its belly
through the leaves.
I turned and saw a rhino-size thing moving through the shadows of the trees.
It was hissing, its front half writhing in all different directions. I couldn’t
understand what I was seeing at first. Then I realized the thing had multiple
necks – at least seven, each topped with a hissing reptilian head. Its skin was
leathery, and under each neck it wore a plastic bib that read: I’M A MONSTER
DOUGHNUT KID!
I took out my ballpoint pen, but Annabeth locked eyes with me – a silent
warning. Not yet.
I understood. A lot of monsters have terrible eyesight. It was possible the
Hydra might pass us by. But if I uncapped my sword now, the bronze glow
would certainly get its attention.
We waited.
The Hydra was only a metre or so away. It seemed to be sniffing the ground
and the trees like it was hunting for something. Then I noticed that two of the
heads were ripping apart a piece of yellow canvas – one of our duffel bags. The
thing had already been to our campsite. It was following our scent.
My heart pounded. I’d seen a stuffed Hydra-head trophy at camp before, but
that did nothing to prepare me for the real thing. Each head was diamondshaped, like a rattlesnake’s, but the mouths were lined with jagged rows of
sharklike teeth.
Tyson was trembling. He stepped back and accidentally snapped a twig.
Immediately, all seven heads turned towards us and hissed.
‘Scatter!’ Annabeth yelled. She dived to the right.
I rolled to the left. One of the Hydra heads spat an arc of green liquid that shot
past my shoulder and splashed against an elm. The trunk smoked and began to
disintegrate. The whole tree toppled straight towards Tyson, who still hadn’t
moved, petrified by the monster that was now right in front of him.
‘Tyson!’ I tackled him with all my might, knocking him aside just as the
Hydra lunged and the tree crashed on top of two of its heads.
The Hydra stumbled backwards, yanking its heads free and wailing in outrage
at the fallen tree. All seven heads shot acid, and the elm melted into a steaming
pool of muck.
‘Move!’ I told Tyson. I ran to one side and uncapped Riptide, hoping to draw
the monster’s attention.
It worked.
The sight of celestial bronze is hateful to most monsters. As soon as my
glowing blade appeared, the Hydra whipped towards it with all its heads, hissing
and baring its teeth.
The good news: Tyson was momentarily out of danger. The bad news: I was
about to be melted into a puddle of goo.
One of the heads snapped at me experimentally. Without thinking, I swung my
sword.
‘No!’ Annabeth yelled.
Too late. I sliced the Hydra’s head clean off. It rolled away into the grass,
leaving a flailing stump, which immediately stopped bleeding and began to swell
like a balloon.
In a matter of seconds the wounded neck split into two necks, each of which
grew a full-size head. Now I was looking at an eight-headed Hydra.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth scolded. ‘You just opened another Monster Doughnut shop
somewhere!’
I dodged a spray of acid. ‘I’m about to die and you’re worried about that?
How do we kill it?’
‘Fire!’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to have fire!’
As soon as she said that, I remembered the story. The Hydra’s heads would
only stop multiplying if we burned the stumps before they regrew. That’s what
Heracles had done, anyway. But we had no fire.
I backed up towards the river. The Hydra followed.
Annabeth moved in on my left and tried to distract one of the heads, parrying
its teeth with her knife, but another head swung sideways like a club and
knocked her into the muck.
‘No hitting my friends!’ Tyson charged in, putting himself between the Hydra
and Annabeth. As Annabeth got to her feet, Tyson started smashing at the
monster heads with his fists so fast it reminded me of the whack-a-mole game at
the arcade. But even Tyson couldn’t fend off the Hydra forever.
We kept inching backwards, dodging acid splashes and deflecting snapping
heads without cutting them off, but I knew we were only postponing our deaths.
Eventually, we would make a mistake and the thing would kill us.
Then I heard a strange sound – a chug-chug-chug that at first I thought was
my heartbeat. It was so powerful it made the riverbank shake.
‘What’s that noise?’ Annabeth shouted, keeping her eyes on the Hydra.
‘Steam engine,’ Tyson said.
‘What? I ducked as the Hydra spat acid over my head.
Then from the river behind us, a familiar female voice shouted, ‘There!
Prepare the thirty-two-pounder!’
I didn’t dare look away from the Hydra, but if that was who I thought it was
behind us, I figured we now had enemies on two fronts.
A gravelly male voice said, ‘They’re too close, m’lady!’
‘Damn the heroes!’ the girl said. ‘Full steam ahead!’
‘Aye, m’lady.’
‘Fire at will, Captain!’
Annabeth understood what was happening a split second before I did. She
yelled, ‘Hit the dirt!’ and we dived for the ground as an earth-shattering BOOM
echoed from the river. There was a flash of light, a column of smoke and the
Hydra exploded right in front of us, showering us with nasty green slime that
vaporized as soon as it hit, the way monster guts tend to do.
‘Gross!’ screamed Annabeth.
‘Steamship!’ yelled Tyson.
I stood, coughing from the cloud of gunpowder smoke that was rolling across
the banks.
Chugging towards us down the river was the strangest ship I’d ever seen. It
rode low in the water like a submarine, its deck plated with iron. In the middle
was a trapezoid-shaped casemate with slats on each side for cannons. A flag
waved from the top – a wild boar and spear on a blood-red field. Lining the deck
were zombies in grey uniforms – dead soldiers with shimmering faces that only
partially covered their skulls, like the ghouls I’d seen in the Underworld
guarding Hades’s palace.
The ship was an ironclad. A Civil War battle cruiser. I could just make out the
name along the prow in moss-covered letters: CSS Birmingham.
And standing next to the smoking cannon that had almost killed us, wearing
full Greek battle armour, was Clarisse.
‘Losers,’ she sneered. ‘But I suppose I have to rescue you. Come aboard.’
11 Clarisse Blows Up Everything
‘You are in so much trouble,’ Clarisse said.
We’d just finished a ship tour we didn’t want, through dark rooms
overcrowded with dead sailors. We’d seen the coal bunker, the boilers and
engine, which huffed and groaned like it would explode any minute. We’d seen
the pilot house and the powder magazine and gunnery deck (Clarisse’s favourite)
with two Dahlgren smoothbore cannons on the port and starboard sides and a
Brooke nine-inch rifled gun fore and aft – all specially refitted to fire celestial
bronze cannonballs.
Everywhere we went, dead Confederate sailors stared at us, their ghostly
bearded faces shimmering over their skulls. They approved of Annabeth because
she told them she was from Virginia. They were interested in me, too, because
my name was Jackson – like the Southern general – but then I ruined it by telling
them I was from New York. They all hissed and muttered curses about Yankees.
Tyson was terrified of them. All through the tour, he insisted Annabeth hold
his hand, which she didn’t look too thrilled about.
Finally, we were escorted to dinner. The CSS Birmingham captain’s quarters
were about the size of a walk-in closet, but still much bigger than any other room
on board. The table was set with white linen and china. Peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches, potato chips and Dr Peppers were served by skeletal crewmen. I
didn’t want to eat anything served by ghosts, but my hunger overruled my fear.
‘Tantalus expelled you for eternity,’ Clarisse told us smugly. ‘Mr D said if any
of you show your face at camp again, he’ll turn you into squirrels and run you
over with his SUV.’
‘Did they give you this ship?’ I asked.
‘Course not. My father did.’
‘Ares?’
Clarisse sneered. ‘You think your daddy is the only one with sea power? The
spirits on the losing side of every war owe a tribute to Ares. That’s their curse
for being defeated. I prayed to my father for a naval transport and here it is.
These guys will do anything I tell them. Won’t you, Captain?’
The captain stood behind her looking stiff and angry. His glowing green eyes
fixed me with a hungry stare. ‘If it means an end to this infernal war, ma’am,
peace at last, we’ll do anything. Destroy anyone.’
Clarisse smiled. ‘Destroy anyone. I like that.’
Tyson gulped.
‘Clarisse,’ Annabeth said, ‘Luke might be after the Fleece, too. We saw him.
He’s got the coordinates and he’s heading south. He has a cruise ship full of
monsters –’
‘Good! I’ll blow him out of the water.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Annabeth said. ‘We have to combine forces. Let us
help you –’
‘No!’ Clarisse pounded the table. ‘This is my quest, smart girl! Finally I get to
be the hero, and you two will not steal my chance.’
‘Where are your cabin mates?’ I asked. ‘You were allowed to take two friends
with you, weren’t you?’
‘They didn’t … I let them stay behind. To protect the camp.’
‘You mean even the people in your own cabin wouldn’t help you?’
‘Shut up, Prissy! I don’t need them! Or you!’
‘Clarisse,’ I said, ‘Tantalus is using you. He doesn’t care about the camp. He’d
love to see it destroyed. He’s setting you up to fail.’
‘No! I don’t care what the Oracle –’ She stopped herself.
‘What?’ I said. ‘What did the Oracle tell you?’
‘Nothing.’ Clarisse’s ears turned pink. ‘All you need to know is that I’m
finishing this quest and you’re not helping. On the other hand, I can’t let you
go…’
‘So we’re prisoners?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Guests. For now.’ Clarisse propped her feet up on the white linen tablecloth
and opened another Dr Pepper. ‘Captain, take them below. Assign them
hammocks on the berth deck. If they don’t mind their manners, show them how
we deal with enemy spies.’
The dream came as soon as I fell asleep.
Grover was sitting at his loom, desperately unravelling his wedding train,
when the boulder door rolled aside and the Cyclops bellowed, ‘Aha!’
Grover yelped. ‘Dear! I didn’t – you were so quiet!’
‘Unravelling!’ Polyphemus roared. ‘So that’s the problem!’
‘Oh, no. I-I wasn’t –’
‘Come!’ Polyphemus grabbed Grover around the waist and half carried, half
dragged him through the tunnels of the cave. Grover struggled to keep his high
heels on his hooves. His veil kept tilting on his head, threatening to come off.
The Cyclops pulled him into a warehouse-size cavern decorated with sheep
junk. There was a wool-covered Lay-Z-Boy recliner and a wool-covered
television set, crude bookshelves loaded with sheep collectibles – coffee mugs
shaped like sheep faces, plaster figurines of sheep, sheep board games and
picture books and action figures. The floor was littered with piles of sheep
bones, and other bones that didn’t look exactly like sheep – the bones of satyrs
who’d come to the island looking for Pan.
Polyphemus set Grover down only long enough to move another huge
boulder. Daylight streamed into the cave, and Grover whimpered with longing.
Fresh air!
The Cyclops dragged him outside to a hilltop overlooking the most beautiful
island I’d ever seen.
It was shaped kind of like a saddle cut in half by an axe. There were lush
green hills on either side and a wide valley in the middle, split by a deep chasm
that was spanned by a rope bridge. Beautiful streams rolled to the edge of the
canyon and dropped off in rainbow-coloured waterfalls. Parrots fluttered in the
trees. Pink and purple flowers bloomed on the bushes. Hundreds of sheep grazed
in the meadows, their wool glinting strangely like copper and silver coins.
And at the centre of the island, right next to the rope bridge, was an enormous
twisted oak tree with something glittering in its lowest bough.
The Golden Fleece.
Even in a dream, I could feel its power radiating across the island, making the
grass greener, the flowers more beautiful. I could almost smell the nature magic
at work. I could only imagine how powerful the scent would be for a satyr.
Grover whimpered.
‘Yes,’ Polyphemus said proudly. ‘See over there? Fleece is the prize of my
collection! Stole it from heroes long ago, and ever since – free food! Satyrs
come from all over the world, like moths to flame. Satyrs good eating! And now
–’
Polyphemus scooped up a wicked set of bronze shears.
Grover yelped, but Polyphemus just picked up the nearest sheep like it was a
stuffed animal and shaved off its wool. He handed a fluffy mass of it to Grover.
‘Put that on the spinning wheel!’ he said proudly. ‘Magic. Cannot be
unravelled.’
‘Oh … well…’
‘Poor Honeypie!’ Polyphemus grinned. ‘Bad weaver. Ha-ha! Not to worry.
That thread will solve problem. Finish wedding train by tomorrow!’
‘Isn’t that … thoughtful of you!’
‘Hehe.’
‘But-but, dear,’ Grover gulped, ‘what if someone were to rescue – I mean
attack this island?’ Grover looked straight at me, and I knew he was asking for
my benefit. ‘What would keep them from marching right up here to your cave?’
‘Wifey scared! So cute! Not to worry. Polyphemus has state-of-the-art security
system. Have to get through my pets.’
‘Pets?’
Grover looked across the island, but there was nothing to see except sheep
grazing peacefully in the meadows.
‘And then,’ Polyphemus growled, ‘they would have to get through me!’
He pounded his fist against the nearest rock, which cracked and split in half.
‘Now, come!’ he shouted. ‘Back to the cave.’
Grover looked about ready to cry – so close to freedom, but so hopelessly far.
Tears welled in his eyes as the boulder door rolled shut, sealing him once again
in the stinky torch-lit dankness of the Cyclops’s cave.
I woke to alarm bells ringing throughout the ship.
The captain’s gravelly voice: ‘All hands on deck! Find Lady Clarisse! Where
is that girl?’
Then his ghostly face appeared above me. ‘Get up, Yankee. Your friends are
already above. We are approaching the entrance.’
‘The entrance to what?’
He gave me a skeletal smile. ‘The Sea of Monsters, of course.’
I stuffed my few belongings that had survived the Hydra into a sailor’s canvas
knapsack and slung it over my shoulder. I had a sneaking suspicion that one way
or another I would not be spending another night aboard the CSS Birmingham.
I was on my way upstairs when something made me freeze. A presence nearby
– something familiar and unpleasant. For no particular reason, I felt like picking
a fight. I wanted to punch a dead Confederate. The last time I’d felt like that kind
of anger…
Instead of going up, I crept to the edge of the ventilation grate and peered
down into the boiler deck.
Clarisse was standing right below me, talking to an image that shimmered in
the steam from the boilers – a muscular man in black leather biker clothes, with
a military haircut, red-tinted sunglasses and a knife strapped to his side.
My fists clenched. It was my least favourite Olympian: Ares, the god of war.
‘I don’t want excuses, little girl!’ he growled.
‘Y-yes, Father,’ Clarisse mumbled.
‘You don’t want to see me mad, do you?’
‘No, Father.’
‘No, Father! Ares mimicked. ‘You’re pathetic. I should’ve let one of my sons
take this quest.’
‘I’ll succeed!’ Clarisse promised, her voice trembling. ‘I’ll make you proud.’
‘You’d better,’ he warned. ‘You asked me for this quest, girl. If you let that
slimeball Jackson kid steal it from you –’
‘But the Oracle said –’
‘I DON’T CARE WHAT IT SAID!’ Ares bellowed with such force that his
image shimmered. ‘You will succeed. And if you don’t…’
He raised his fist. Even though he was only a figure in the steam, Clarisse
flinched.
‘Do we understand each other?’ Ares growled.
The alarm bells rang again. I heard voices coming towards me, officers yelling
orders to ready the cannons.
I crept back from the ventilation grate and made my way upstairs to join
Annabeth and Tyson on the spar deck.
‘What’s wrong?’ Annabeth asked me. ‘Another dream?’
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to think about what I’d
seen downstairs. It bothered me almost as much as the dream about Grover.
Clarisse came up the stairs right after me. I tried not to look at her.
She grabbed a pair of binoculars from a zombie officer and peered towards the
horizon. ‘At last. Captain, full steam ahead!’
I looked in the same direction as she was, but I couldn’t see much. The sky
was overcast. The air was hazy and humid, like steam from an iron. If I squinted
real hard, I could just make out a couple of dark fuzzy splotches in the distance.
My nautical senses told me we were somewhere off the coast of northern
Florida, so we’d come a long way overnight, further than any mortal ship
should’ve been able to travel.
The engine groaned as we increased speed.
Tyson muttered nervously, ‘Too much strain on the pistons. Not meant for
deep water.’
I wasn’t sure how he knew that, but it made me nervous.
After a few more minutes, the dark splotches ahead of us came into focus. To
the north, a huge mass of rock rose out of the sea – an island with cliffs at least
thirty metres tall. About half a mile south of that, the other patch of darkness was
a storm brewing. The sky and sea boiled together in a roaring mass.
‘Hurricane?’ Annabeth asked.
‘No,’ Clarisse said. ‘Charybdis.’
Annabeth paled. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Only way into the Sea of Monsters. Straight between Charybdis and her sister
Scylla.’ Clarisse pointed to the top of the cliffs, and I got the feeling something
lived up there that I did not want to meet.
‘What do you mean the only way?’ I asked. ‘The sea is wide open! Just sail
around them.’
Clarisse rolled her eyes. ‘Don’t you know anything? If I tried to sail around
them, they would just appear in my path again. If you want to get into the Sea of
Monsters, you have to sail through them.’
‘What about the Clashing Rocks?’ Annabeth said. ‘That’s another gateway.
Jason used it.’
‘I can’t blow apart rocks with my cannons,’ Clarisse said. ‘Monsters, on the
other hand…’
‘You are crazy,’ Annabeth decided.
‘Watch and learn, Wise Girl.’ Clarisse turned to the captain. ‘Set course for
Charybdis!’
‘Aye, m’lady.’
The engine groaned, the iron plating rattled, and the ship began to pick up
speed.
‘Clarisse,’ I said, ‘Charybdis sucks up the sea. Isn’t that the story?’
‘And spits it back out again, yeah.’
‘What about Scylla?’
‘She lives in a cave, up on those cliffs. If we get too close, her snaky heads
will come down and start plucking sailors off the ship.’
‘Choose Scylla then,’ I said. ‘Everybody goes below deck and we chug right
past.’
‘No!’ Clarisse insisted. ‘If Scylla doesn’t get her easy meat, she might pick up
the whole ship. Besides, she’s too high to make a good target. My cannon can’t
shoot straight up. Charybdis just sits there at the centre of her whirlpool. We’re
going to steam straight towards her, train our guns on her, and blow her to
Tartarus!’
She said it with such relish I almost wanted to believe her.
The engine hummed. The boilers were heating up so much I could feel the
deck getting warm beneath my feet. The smokestacks billowed. The red Ares
flag whipped in the wind.
As we got closer to the monsters, the sound of Charybdis got louder and
louder – a horrible wet roar like the galaxy’s biggest toilet being flushed. Every
time Charybdis inhaled, the ship shuddered and lurched forward. Every time she
exhaled, we rose in the water and were buffeted by three-metre waves.
I tried to time the whirlpool. As near as I could figure, it took Charybdis about
three minutes to suck up and destroy everything within a half-mile radius. To
avoid her, we would have to skirt right next to Scylla’s cliffs. And as bad as
Scylla might be, those cliffs were looking awfully good to me.
Undead sailors calmly went about their business on the spar deck. I guess
they’d fought a losing cause before, so this didn’t bother them. Or maybe they
didn’t care about getting destroyed because they were already deceased. Neither
thought made me feel any better.
Annabeth stood next to me, gripping the rail. ‘You still have your Flask full of
wind?’
I nodded. ‘But it’s too dangerous to use with a whirlpool like that. More wind
might just make things worse.’
‘What about controlling the water?’ she asked. ‘You’re Poseidon’s son.
You’ve done it before.’
She was right. I closed my eyes and tried to calm the sea, but I couldn’t
concentrate. Charybdis was too loud and powerful. The waves wouldn’t respond.
‘I-I can’t,’ I said miserably.
‘We need a backup plan,’ Annabeth said. ‘This isn’t going to work.’
‘Annabeth is right,’ Tyson said. ‘Engine’s no good.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Pressure. Pistons need fixing.’
Before he could explain, the cosmic toilet flushed with a mighty roaaar! The
ship lurched forward and I was thrown to the deck. We were in the whirlpool.
‘Full reverse!’ Clarisse screamed above the noise. The sea churned around us,
waves crashing over the deck. The iron plating was now so hot it steamed. ‘Get
us within firing range! Make ready starboard cannons!’
Dead Confederates rushed back and forth. The propeller grinded into reverse,
trying to slow the ship, but we kept sliding towards the centre of the vortex.
A zombie sailor burst out of the hold and ran to Clarisse. His grey uniform
was smoking. His beard was on fire. ‘Boiler room overheating, ma’am! She’s
going to blow!’
‘Well, get down there and fix it!’
‘Can’t!’ the sailor yelled. ‘We’re vaporizing in the heat.’
Clarisse pounded the side of the casemate. ‘All I need is a few more minutes!
Just enough to get in range!’
‘We’re going in too fast,’ the captain said grimly. ‘Prepare yourself for death.’
‘No!’ Tyson bellowed. ‘I can fix it.’
Clarisse looked at him incredulously. ‘You?’
‘He’s a Cyclops,’ Annabeth said. ‘He’s immune to fire. And he knows
mechanics.’
‘Go!’ yelled Clarisse.
‘Tyson, no!’ I grabbed his arm. ‘It’s too dangerous!’
He patted my hand. ‘Only way, brother.’ His expression was determined –
confident, even. I’d never seen him look like this before. ‘I will fix it. Be right
back.’
As I watched him follow the smouldering sailor down the hatch, I had a
terrible feeling. I wanted to run after him, but the ship lurched again – and then I
saw Charybdis.
She appeared only a few hundred metres away, through a swirl of mist and
smoke and water. The first thing I noticed was the reef – a black crag of coral
with a fig tree clinging to the top, an oddly peaceful thing in the middle of a
maelstrom. All around it, water curved into a funnel, like light around a black
hole. Then I saw the horrible thing anchored to the reef just below the waterline
– an enormous mouth with slimy lips and mossy teeth the size of rowboats. And
worse, the teeth had braces, bands of corroded scummy metal with pieces of fish
and driftwood and floating garbage stuck between them.
Charybdis was an orthodontist’s nightmare. She was nothing but a huge black
maw with bad teeth alignment and a serious overbite, and she’d done nothing for
centuries but eat without brushing after meals. As I watched, the entire sea
around her was sucked into the void – sharks, schools of fish, a giant squid. And
I realized that in a few seconds, the CSS Birmingham would be next.
‘Lady Clarisse,’ the captain shouted. ‘Starboard and forward guns are in
range!’
‘Fire!’ Clarisse ordered.
Three rounds were blasted into the monster’s maw. One blew off the edge of
an incisor. Another disappeared into her gullet. The third hit one of Charybdis’s
retaining bands and shot back at us, snapping the Ares flag off its pole.
‘Again!’ Clarisse ordered. The gunners reloaded, but I knew it was hopeless.
We would have to pound the monster a hundred more times to do any real
damage, and we didn’t have that long. We were being sucked in too fast.
Then the vibrations in the deck changed. The hum of the engine got stronger
and steadier. The ship shuddered and we started pulling away from the mouth.
‘Tyson did it!’ Annabeth said.
‘Wait!’ Clarisse said. ‘We need to stay close!’
‘We’ll die!’ I said. ‘We have to move away.’
I gripped the rail as the ship fought against the suction. The broken Ares flag
raced past us and lodged in Charybdis’s braces. We weren’t making much
progress, but at least we were holding our own. Tyson had somehow given us
just enough juice to keep the ship from being sucked in.
Suddenly, the mouth snapped shut. The sea died to absolute calm. Water
washed over Charybdis.
Then, just as quickly as it had closed, the mouth exploded open, spitting out a
wall of water, ejecting everything inedible, including our cannonballs, one of
which slammed into the side of the CSS Birmingham with a ding like the bell on
a carnival game.
We were thrown backwards on a wave that must’ve been fifteen metres high. I
used all of my willpower to keep the ship from capsizing, but we were still
spinning out of control, hurtling towards the cliffs on the opposite side of the
strait.
Another smouldering sailor burst out of the hold. He stumbled into Clarisse,
almost knocking them both overboard. ‘The engine is about to blow!’
‘Where’s Tyson?’ I demanded.
‘Still down there,’ the sailor said. ‘Holding it together somehow, though I
don’t know for how much longer.’
The captain said, ‘We have to abandon ship.’
‘No!’ Clarisse yelled.
‘We have no choice, m’lady. The hull is already cracking apart! She can’t –’
He never finished his sentence. Quick as lightning, something brown and
green shot from the sky, snatched up the captain, and lifted him away. All that
was left were his leather boots.
‘Scylla!’ a sailor yelled, as another column of reptilian flesh shot from the
cliffs and snapped him up. It happened so fast it was like watching a laser beam
rather than a monster. I couldn’t even make out the thing’s face, just a flash of
teeth and scales.
I uncapped Riptide and tried to swipe at the monster as it carried off another
deckhand, but I was way too slow.
‘Everyone get below!’ I yelled.
‘We can’t!’ Clarisse drew her own sword. ‘Below deck is in flames.’
‘Lifeboats!’ Annabeth said. ‘Quick!’
‘They’ll never get clear of the cliffs,’ Clarisse said. ‘We’ll all be eaten.’
‘We have to try. Percy, the Flask.’
‘I can’t leave Tyson!’
‘We have to get the boats ready!’
Clarisse took Annabeth’s command. She and a few of her undead sailors
uncovered one of the two emergency rowboats while Scylla’s heads rained from
the sky like a meteor shower with teeth, picking off Confederate sailors one after
another.
‘Get the other boat.’ I threw Annabeth the Flask. ‘I’ll get Tyson.’
‘You can’t!’ she said. ‘The heat will kill you!’
I didn’t listen. I ran for the boiler room hatch, when suddenly my feet weren’t
touching the deck any more. I was flying straight up, the wind whistling in my
ears, the side of the cliff only inches from my face.
Scylla had somehow caught me by the knapsack, and was lifting me up
towards her lair. Without thinking, I swung my sword behind me and managed to
jab the thing in her beady yellow eye. She grunted and dropped me.
The fall would’ve been bad enough, considering I was thirty metres in the air.
But, as I fell, the CSS Birmingham exploded below me.
KAROOM!
The engine room blew, sending chunks of ironclad flying in either direction
like a fiery set of wings.
‘Tyson!’ I yelled.
The lifeboats had managed to get away from the ship, but not very far.
Flaming wreckage was raining down. Clarisse and Annabeth would either be
smashed or burned or pulled to the bottom by the force of the sinking hull, and
that was thinking optimistically, assuming they got away from Scylla.
Then I heard a different kind of explosion – the sound of Hermes’s magic
Flask being opened a little too far. White sheets of wind blasted in every
direction, scattering the lifeboats, lifting me out of my free fall and propelling
me across the ocean.
I couldn’t see anything. I spun in the air, got clonked on the head by
something hard, and hit the water with a crash that would’ve broken every bone
in my body if I hadn’t been the son of the Sea God.
The last thing I remembered was sinking in a burning sea, knowing that Tyson
was gone forever, and wishing I were able to drown.
12 We Check In to C.C.’s Spa & Resort
I woke up in a rowboat with a makeshift sail stitched of grey uniform fabric.
Annabeth sat next to me, tacking into the wind.
I tried to sit up and immediately felt woozy.
‘Rest,’ she said. ‘You’re going to need it.’
‘Tyson …?’
She shook her head. ‘Percy, I’m really sorry.’
We were silent while the waves tossed us up and down.
‘He may have survived,’ she said half-heartedly. ‘I mean, fire can’t kill him.’
I nodded, but I had no reason to feel hopeful. I’d seen that explosion rip
through solid iron. If Tyson had been down in the boiler room, there was no way
he could’ve lived.
He’d given his life for us, and all I could think about were the times I’d felt
embarrassed by him and had denied that the two of us were related.
Waves lapped at the boat. Annabeth showed me some things she’d salvaged
from the wreckage – Hermes’s Flask (now empty), an airtight bag full of
ambrosia, a couple of sailors’ shirts and a bottle of Dr Pepper. She’d fished me
out of the water and found my knapsack, bitten in half by Scylla’s teeth. Most of
my stuff had floated away, but I still had Hermes’s bottle of multivitamins, and
of course I had Riptide. The ballpoint pen always appeared back in my pocket no
matter where I lost it.
We sailed for hours. Now that we were in the Sea of Monsters, the water
glittered a more brilliant green, like Hydra acid. The wind smelled fresh and
salty, but it carried a strange metallic scent, too – as if a thunderstorm were
coming. Or something even more dangerous. I knew what direction we needed
to go. I knew we were exactly one hundred and thirteen nautical miles west by
northwest of our destination. But that didn’t make me feel any less lost.
No matter which way we turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into my
eyes. We took turns sipping from the Dr Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail
as best we could. And we talked about my latest dream of Grover.
By Annabeth’s estimate, we had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover,
assuming my dream was accurate, and assuming the Cyclops Polyphemus didn’t
change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier.
‘Yeah,’ I said bitterly. ‘You can never trust a Cyclops.’
Annabeth stared across the water. ‘I’m sorry, Percy. I was wrong about Tyson,
okay? I wish I could tell him that.’
I tried to stay mad at her, but it wasn’t easy. We’d been through a lot together.
She’d saved my life plenty of times. It was stupid of me to resent her.
I looked down at our measly possessions – the empty wind Flask, the bottle of
multivitamins. I thought about Luke’s look of rage when I’d tried to talk to him
about his dad.
‘Annabeth, what’s Chiron’s prophecy?’
She pursed her lips. ‘Percy, I shouldn’t –’
‘I know Chiron promised the gods he wouldn’t tell me. But you didn’t
promise, did you?’
‘Knowledge isn’t always good for you.’
‘Your mom is the wisdom goddess!’
‘I know! But every time heroes learn the future, they try to change it, and it
never works.’
‘The gods are worried about something I’ll do when I get older,’ I guessed.
‘Something when I turn sixteen.’
Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. ‘Percy, I don’t know the full
prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three – the next one
who lives to the age of sixteen. That’s the real reason Zeus, Poseidon and Hades
swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the
Big Three who reaches sixteen will be a dangerous weapon.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that hero will decide the fate of Olympus. He or she will make a
decision that either saves the Age of the Gods, or destroys it.’
I let that sink in. I don’t get seasick, but suddenly I felt ill. ‘That’s why Kronos
didn’t kill me last summer.’
She nodded. ‘You could be very useful to him. If he can get you on his side,
the gods will be in serious trouble.’
‘But if it’s me in the prophecy –’
‘We’ll only know that if you survive three more years. That can be a long time
for a half-blood. When Chiron first learned about Thalia, he assumed she was
the one in the prophecy. That’s why he was so desperate to get her safely to
camp. Then she went down fighting and got turned into a pine tree and none of
us knew what to think. Until you came along.’
On our port side, a spiky green dorsal fin about five metres long curled out of
the water and disappeared.
‘This kid in the prophecy … he or she couldn’t be like, a Cyclops?’ I asked.
‘The Big Three have lots of monster children.’
Annabeth shook her head. ‘The Oracle said “half-blood”. That always means
half human, half god. There’s really nobody alive who it could be, except you.’
‘Then why do the gods even let me live? It would be safer to kill me.’
‘You’re right.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
‘Percy, I don’t know. I guess some of the gods would like to kill you, but
they’re probably afraid of offending Poseidon. Other gods … maybe they’re still
watching you, trying to decide what kind of hero you’re going to be. You could
be a weapon for their survival, after all. The real question is … what will you do
in three years? What decision will you make?’
‘Did the prophecy give any hints?’
Annabeth hesitated.
Maybe she would’ve told me more, but just then a seagull swooped down out
of nowhere and landed on our makeshift mast. Annabeth looked startled as the
bird dropped a small cluster of leaves into her lap.
‘Land,’ she said. ‘There’s land nearby!’
I sat up. Sure enough, there was a line of blue and brown in the distance.
Another minute and I could make out an island with a small mountain in the
centre, a dazzling white collection of buildings, a beach dotted with palm trees
and a harbour filled with a strange assortment of boats.
The current was pulling our rowboat towards what looked like a tropical
paradise.
‘Welcome!’ said the lady with the clipboard.
She looked like a flight attendant – blue business suit, perfect makeup, hair
pulled back in a ponytail. She shook our hands as we stepped onto the dock.
With the dazzling smile she gave us, you would’ve thought we’d just got off the
Princess Andromeda rather than a bashed-up rowboat.
Then again, our rowboat wasn’t the weirdest ship in port. Along with a bunch
of pleasure yachts, there was a U.S. Navy submarine, several dugout canoes and
an old-fashioned three-masted sailing ship. There was a helipad with a ‘Channel
Five Fort Lauderdale’ helicopter on it, and a short runway with a Learjet and a
propeller plane that looked like a World War II fighter. Maybe they were replicas
for tourists to look at or something.
‘Is this your first time with us?’ the clipboard lady enquired.
Annabeth and I exchanged looks. Annabeth said, ‘Umm…’
‘First – time – at – spa,’ the lady said as she wrote on her clipboard. ‘Let’s
see…’
She looked us up and down critically. ‘Mmm. An herbal wrap to start for the
young lady. And of course, a complete makeover for the young gentleman.’
‘A what?’ I asked.
She was too busy jotting down notes to answer.
‘Right!’ she said with a breezy smile. ‘Well, I’m sure C.C. will want to speak
with you personally before the luau. Come, please.’
Now here’s the thing. Annabeth and I were used to traps, and usually those
traps looked good at first. So I expected the clipboard lady to turn into a snake or
a demon, or something, any minute. But, on the other hand, we’d been floating
in a rowboat for most of the day. I was hot, tired and hungry, and when this lady
mentioned a luau, my stomach sat up on its hind legs and begged like a dog.
‘I guess it couldn’t hurt,’ Annabeth muttered.
Of course it could, but we followed the lady anyway. I kept my hands in my
pockets where I’d stashed my only magic defences – Hermes’s multivitamins
and Riptide – but the further we wandered into the resort, the more I forgot about
them.
The place was amazing. There was white marble and blue water everywhere I
looked. Terraces climbed up the side of the mountain, with swimming pools on
every level, connected by waterslides and waterfalls and underwater tubes you
could swim through. Fountains sprayed water into the air, forming impossible
shapes, like flying eagles and galloping horses.
Tyson loved horses, and I knew he’d love those fountains. I almost turned
around to see the expression on his face before I remembered: Tyson was gone.
‘You okay?’ Annabeth asked me. ‘You look pale.’
‘I’m okay,’ I lied. ‘Just … let’s keep walking.’
We passed all kinds of tame animals. A sea turtle napped in a stack of beach
towels. A leopard stretched out asleep on the diving board. The resort guests –
only young women, as far as I could see – lounged in deckchairs, drinking fruit
smoothies or reading magazines while herbal gunk dried on their faces and
manicurists in white uniforms did their nails.
As we headed up a staircase towards what looked like the main building, I
heard a woman singing. Her voice drifted through the air like a lullaby. Her
words were in some language other than Ancient Greek, but just as old –
Minoan, maybe, or something like that. I could understand what she sang about
– moonlight in the olive groves, the colours of the sunrise. And magic.
Something about magic. Her voice seemed to lift me off the steps and carry me
towards her.
We came into a big room where the whole front wall was windows. The back
wall was covered in mirrors, so the room seemed to go on forever. There was a
bunch of expensive-looking white furniture, and on a table in one corner was a
large wire pet cage. The cage seemed out of place, but I didn’t think about it too
much, because just then I saw the lady who’d been singing … and whoa.
She sat at a loom the size of a big screen TV, her hands weaving coloured
thread back and forth with amazing skill. The tapestry shimmered like it was
three-dimensional – a waterfall scene so real I could see the water moving and
clouds drifting across a fabric sky.
Annabeth caught her breath. ‘It’s beautiful.’
The woman turned. She was even prettier than her fabric. Her long dark hair
was braided with threads of gold. She had piercing green eyes and she wore a
silky black dress with shapes that seemed to move in the fabric: animal shadows,
black upon black, like deer running through a forest at night.
‘You appreciate weaving, my dear?’ the woman asked.
‘Oh, yes, ma’am!’ Annabeth said. ‘My mother is –’
She stopped herself. You couldn’t just go around announcing that your mom
was Athena, the goddess who invented the loom. Most people would lock you in
a rubber room.
Our hostess just smiled. ‘You have good taste, my dear. I’m so glad you’ve
come. My name is C.C.’
The animals in the corner cage started squealing. They must’ve been guinea
pigs, from the sound of them.
We introduced ourselves to C.C. She looked me over with a twinge of
disapproval, as if I’d failed some kind of test. Immediately, I felt bad. For some
reason, I really wanted to please this lady.
‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘You do need my help.’
‘Ma’am?’ I asked.
C.C. called to the lady in the business suit. ‘Hylla, take Annabeth on a tour,
will you? Show her what we have available. The clothing will need to change.
And the hair, my goodness. We will do a full image consultation after I’ve
spoken with this young gentleman.’
‘But…’ Annabeth’s voice sounded hurt. ‘What’s wrong with my hair?’
C.C. smiled benevolently. ‘My dear, you are lovely. Really! But you’re not
showing off yourself or your talents at all. So much wasted potential!’
‘Wasted?’
‘Well, surely you’re not happy the way you are! My goodness, there’s not a
single person who is. But don’t worry. We can improve anyone here at the spa.
Hylla will show you what I mean. You, my dear, need to unlock your true self!’
Annabeth’s eyes glowed with longing. I’d never seen her so much at a loss for
words. ‘But … what about Percy?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ C.C. said, giving me a sad look. ‘Percy requires my personal
attention. He needs much more work than you.’
Normally if somebody had told me that, I would’ve got angry, but when C.C.
said it, I felt sad. I’d disappointed her. I had to figure out how to do better.
The guinea pigs squealed like they were hungry.
‘Well…’ Annabeth said. ‘I suppose…’
‘Right this way, dear,’ Hylla said. And Annabeth allowed herself to be led
away into the waterfall-laced gardens of the spa.
C.C. took my arm and guided me towards the mirrored wall. ‘You see, Percy
… to unlock your potential, you’ll need serious help. The first step is admitting
that you’re not happy the way you are.’
I fidgeted in front of the mirror. I hated thinking about my appearance – like
the first zit that had cropped up on my nose at the beginning of the school year,
or the fact that my two front teeth weren’t perfectly even, or that my hair never
stayed down straight.
C.C.’s voice brought all of these things to mind, as if she were passing me
under a microscope. And my clothes were not cool. I knew that.
Who cares? part of me thought. But standing in front of C.C.’s mirror, it was
hard to see anything good in myself.
‘There, there,’ C.C. consoled. ‘How about we try … this.’
She snapped her fingers and a sky-blue curtain rolled down over the mirror. It
shimmered like the fabric on her loom.
‘What do you see?’ C.C. asked.
I looked at the blue cloth, not sure what she meant. ‘I don’t –’
Then it changed colours. I saw myself – a reflection, but not a reflection.
Shimmering there on the cloth was a cooler version of Percy Jackson – with just
the right clothes, a confident smile on my face. My teeth were straight. No zits.
A perfect tan. More athletic. Maybe a couple of centimetres taller. It was me,
without the faults.
‘Whoa,’ I managed.
‘Do you want that?’ C.C. asked. ‘Or shall I try a different –’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s … that’s amazing. Can you really –’
‘I can give you a full makeover,’ C.C. promised.
‘What’s the catch?’ I said. ‘I have to like … eat a special diet?’
‘Oh, it’s quite easy,’ C.C. said. ‘Plenty of fresh fruit, a mild exercise
programme, and of course … this.’
She stepped over to her wet bar and filled a glass with water. Then she ripped
open a drink-mix packet and poured in some red powder. The mixture began to
glow. When it faded, the drink looked just like a strawberry milkshake.
‘One of these, substituted for a regular meal,’ C.C. said. ‘I guarantee you’ll
see results immediately.’
‘How is that possible?’
She laughed. ‘Why question it? I mean, don’t you want the perfect you right
away?’
Something nagged at the back of my mind. ‘Why are there no guys at this
spa?’
‘Oh, but there are,’ C.C. assured me. ‘You’ll meet them quite soon. Just try the
mixture. You’ll see.’
I looked at the blue tapestry, at the reflection of me, but not me.
‘Now, Percy,’ C.C. chided. ‘The hardest part of the makeover process is giving
up control. You have to decide: do you want to trust your judgement about what
you should be, or my judgement?’
My throat felt dry. I heard myself say, ‘Your judgement.’
C.C. smiled and handed me the glass. I lifted it to my lips.
It tasted just like it looked – like a strawberry milkshake. Almost immediately
a warm feeling spread through my gut: pleasant at first, then painfully hot,
searing, as if the mixture were coming to a boil inside me.
I doubled over and dropped the cup. ‘What have you … what’s happening?’
‘Don’t worry, Percy,’ C.C. said. ‘The pain will pass. Look! As I promised.
Immediate results.’
Something was horribly wrong.
The curtain dropped away, and in the mirror I saw my hands shrivelling,
curling, growing long delicate claws. Fur sprouted on my face, under my shirt, in
every uncomfortable place you can imagine. My teeth felt too heavy in my
mouth. My clothes were getting too big, or C.C. was getting too tall – no, I was
shrinking.
In one awful flash, I sank into a cavern of dark cloth. I was buried in my own
shirt. I tried to run but hands grabbed me – hands as big as I was. I tried to
scream for help, but all that came out of my mouth was, ‘Reeet, reeet, reeet!’
The giant hands squeezed me around the middle, lifting me into the air. I
struggled and kicked with legs and arms that seemed much too stubby, and then I
was staring, horrified, into the enormous face of C.C.
‘Perfect!’ her voice boomed. I squirmed in alarm, but she only tightened her
grip around my furry belly. ‘See, Percy? You’ve unlocked your true self!’
She held me up to the mirror, and what I saw made me scream in terror,
‘Reeet, reeet, reeet!’ There was C.C., beautiful and smiling, holding a fluffy,
bucktoothed creature with tiny claws and white-and-orange fur. When I twisted,
so did the furry critter in the mirror. I was … I was…
‘A guinea pig,’ C.C. said. ‘Lovely, aren’t you? Men are pigs, Percy Jackson. I
used to turn them into real pigs, but they were so smelly and large and difficult
to keep. Not much different than they were before, really. Guinea pigs are much
more convenient! Now come, and meet the other men.’
‘Reeet!’ I protested, trying to scratch her, but C.C. squeezed me so tight I
almost blacked out.
‘None of that, little one,’ she scolded, ‘or I’ll feed you to the owls. Go into the
cage like a good little pet. Tomorrow, if you behave, you’ll be on your way.
There is always a classroom in need of a new guinea pig.’
My mind was racing as fast as my tiny little heart. I needed to get back to my
clothes, which were lying in a heap on the floor. If I could do that, I could get
Riptide out of my pocket and … And what? I couldn’t uncap the pen. Even if I
did, I couldn’t hold the sword.
I squirmed helplessly as C.C. brought me over to the guinea pig cage and
opened the wire door.
‘Meet my discipline problems, Percy,’ she warned. ‘They’ll never make good
classroom pets, but they might teach you some manners. Most of them have
been in this cage for three hundred years. If you don’t want to stay with them
permanently, I’d suggest you –’
Annabeth’s voice called, ‘Miss C.C.?’
C.C. cursed in Ancient Greek. She plopped me into the cage and closed the
door. I squealed and clawed at the bars, but it was no good. I watched as C.C.
hurriedly kicked my clothes under the loom just as Annabeth came in.
I almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing a sleeveless silk dress like
C.C.’s, only white. Her blonde hair was newly washed and combed and braided
with gold. Worst of all, she was wearing makeup, which I never thought
Annabeth would be caught dead in. I mean, she looked good. Really good. I
probably would’ve been tongue-tied if I could’ve said anything except reet, reet,
reet. But there was also something totally wrong about it. It just wasn’t
Annabeth.
She looked around the room and frowned. ‘Where’s Percy?’
I squealed up a storm, but she didn’t seem to hear me.
C.C. smiled. ‘He’s having one of our treatments, my dear. Not to worry. You
look wonderful! What did you think of your tour?’
Annabeth’s eyes brightened. ‘Your library is amazing!’
‘Yes, indeed,’ C.C. said. ‘The best knowledge of the past three millennia.
Anything you want to study, anything you want to be, my dear.’
‘An architect?’
‘Pah!’ C.C. said. ‘You, my dear, have the makings of a sorceress. Like me.’
Annabeth took a step back. ‘A sorceress?’
‘Yes, my dear.’ C.C. held up her hand. A flame appeared in her palm and
danced across her fingertips. ‘My mother is Hecate, the goddess of magic. I
know a daughter of Athena when I see one. We are not so different, you and I.
We both seek knowledge. We both admire greatness. Neither of us needs to stand
in the shadow of men.’
‘I-I don’t understand.’
Again, I squealed my best, trying to get Annabeth’s attention, but she either
couldn’t hear me or didn’t think the noises were important. Meanwhile, the other
guinea pigs were emerging from their hutch to check me out. I didn’t think it was
possible for guinea pigs to look mean, but these did. There were half a dozen,
with dirty fur and cracked teeth and beady red eyes. They were covered with
shavings and smelled like they really had been in here for three hundred years,
without getting their cage cleaned.
‘Stay with me,’ C.C. was telling Annabeth. ‘Study with me. You can join our
staff, become a sorceress, learn to bend others to your will. You will become
immortal!’
‘But –’
‘You are too intelligent, my dear,’ C.C. said. ‘You know better than to trust
that silly camp for heroes. How many great female half-blood heroes can you
name?’
‘Um, Atalanta, Amelia Earhart –’
‘Bah! Men get all the glory.’ C.C. closed her fist and extinguished the magic
flame. ‘The only way to power for women is sorcery. Medea, Calypso, now there
were powerful women! And me, of course. The greatest of all.’
‘You … C.C. … Circe!’
‘Yes, my dear.’
Annabeth backed up, and Circe laughed. ‘You need not worry. I mean you no
harm.’
‘What have you done to Percy?’
‘Only helped him realize his true form.’
Annabeth scanned the room. Finally she saw the cage, and me scratching at
the bars, all the other guinea pigs crowding around me. Her eyes went wide.
‘Forget him,’ Circe said. ‘Join me and learn the ways of sorcery.’
‘But –’
‘Your friend will be well cared for. He’ll be shipped to a wonderful new home
on the mainland. The kindergartners will adore him. Meanwhile, you will be
wise and powerful. You will have all you ever wanted.’
Annabeth was still staring at me, but she had a dreamy expression on her face.
She looked the same way I had when Circe enchanted me into drinking the
guinea pig milkshake. I squealed and scratched, trying to warn her to snap out of
it, but I was absolutely powerless.
‘Let me think about it,’ Annabeth murmured. ‘Just … give me a minute alone.
To say goodbye.’
‘Of course, my dear,’ Circe cooed. ‘One minute. Oh … and so you have
absolute privacy…’ She waved her hand and iron bars slammed down over the
windows. She swept out of the room and I heard the locks on the door click shut
behind her.
The dreamy look melted off Annabeth’s face.
She rushed over to my cage. ‘All right, which one is you?’
I squealed, but so did all the other guinea pigs. Annabeth looked desperate.
She scanned the room and spotted the turn-up of my jeans sticking out from
under the loom.
Yes!
She rushed over and rummaged through my pockets.
But instead of bringing out Riptide, she found the bottle of Hermes’s
multivitamins and started struggling with the cap.
I wanted to scream at her that this wasn’t the time for taking supplements! She
had to draw the sword!
She popped a lemon chewable in her mouth just as the door flew open and
Circe came back in, flanked by two of her business-suited attendants.
‘Well,’ Circe sighed, ‘how fast a minute passes. What is your answer, my
dear?’
‘This,’ Annabeth said, and she drew her bronze knife.
The sorceress stepped back, but her surprise quickly passed. She sneered.
‘Really, little girl, a knife against my magic? Is that wise?’
Circe looked back at her attendants, who smiled. They raised their hands as if
preparing to cast a spell.
Run! I wanted to tell Annabeth, but all I could make were rodent noises. The
other guinea pigs squealed in terror and scuttled around the cage. I had the urge
to panic and hide, too, but I had to think of something! I couldn’t stand to lose
Annabeth the way I’d lost Tyson.
‘What will Annabeth’s makeover be?’ Circe mused. ‘Something small and illtempered. I know … a shrew!’
Blue fire coiled from her fingers curling like serpents around Annabeth.
I watched, horror-struck, but nothing happened. Annabeth was still Annabeth,
only angrier. She leaped forward and stuck the point of her knife against Circe’s
neck. ‘How about turning me into a panther instead? One that has her claws at
your throat!’
‘How!’ Circe yelped.
Annabeth held up my bottle of vitamins for the sorceress to see.
Circe howled in frustration. ‘Curse Hermes and his multivitamins! Those are
such a fad! They do nothing for you.’
‘Turn Percy back to a human or else!’ Annabeth said.
‘I can’t!’
‘Then you asked for it.’
Circe’s attendants stepped forward, but their mistress said, ‘Get back! She’s
immune to magic until that cursed vitamin wears off.’
Annabeth dragged Circe over to the guinea pig cage, knocked the top off, and
poured the rest of the vitamins inside.
‘No!’ Circe screamed.
I was the first to get a vitamin, but all the other guinea pigs scuttled out, too,
and checked out this new food.
The first nibble, and I felt all fiery inside. I gnawed at the vitamin until it
stopped looking so huge, and the cage got smaller, and then suddenly, bang! The
cage exploded. I was sitting on the floor, a human again – somehow back in my
regular clothes, thank the gods – with six other guys who all looked disoriented,
blinking and shaking wood shavings out of their hair.
‘No!’ Circe screamed. ‘You don’t understand! Those are the worst!’
One of the men stood up – a huge guy with a long tangled pitch-black beard
and teeth the same colour. He wore mismatched clothes of wool and leather,
knee-length boots, and a floppy felt hat. The other men were dressed more
simply – in breeches and stained white shirts. All of them were barefoot.
‘Argggh!’ bellowed the big man. ‘What’s the witch done t’me!’
‘No!’ Circe moaned.
Annabeth gasped. ‘I recognize you! Edward Teach, son of Ares?’
‘Aye, lass,’ the big man growled. ‘Though most call me Blackbeard! And
there’s the sorceress what captured us, lads. Run her through, and then I mean to
find me a big bowl of celery! Arggggh!’
Circe screamed. She and her attendants ran from the room, chased by the
pirates.
Annabeth sheathed her knife and glared at me.
‘Thanks…’ I faltered. ‘I’m really sorry –’
Before I could figure out how to apologize for being such an idiot, she tackled
me with a hug, then pulled away just as quickly. ‘I’m glad you’re not a guinea
pig.’
‘Me, too.’ I hoped my face wasn’t as red as it felt.
She undid the golden braids in her hair.
‘Come on, Seaweed Brain,’ she said. ‘We have to get away while Circe’s
distracted.’
We ran down the hillside through the terraces, past screaming spa workers and
pirates ransacking the resort. Blackbeard’s men broke the tiki torches for the
luau, threw herbal wraps into the swimming pool and kicked over tables of sauna
towels.
I almost felt bad letting the unruly pirates out, but I guessed they deserved
something more entertaining than the exercise wheel after being cooped up in a
cage for three centuries.
‘Which ship?’ Annabeth said as we reached the docks.
I looked around desperately. We couldn’t very well take our rowboat. We had
to get off the island fast, but what else could we use? A sub? A fighter jet? I
couldn’t pilot any of those things. And then I saw it.
‘There,’ I said.
Annabeth blinked. ‘But –’
‘I can make it work.’
‘How?’
I couldn’t explain. I just somehow knew an old sailing vessel was the best bet
for me. I grabbed Annabeth’s hand and pulled her towards the three-mast ship.
Painted on its prow was the name that I would only decipher later: Queen Anne’s
Revenge.
Argggh!’ Blackbeard yelled somewhere behind us. ‘Those scallywags are aboarding me vessel! Get ‘em, lads!’
‘We’ll never get going in time!’ Annabeth yelled as we climbed aboard.
I looked around at the hopeless maze of sail and ropes. The ship was in great
condition for a three-hundred-year-old vessel, but it would still take a crew of
fifty several hours to get underway. We didn’t have several hours. I could see the
pirates running down the stairs, waving tiki torches and sticks of celery.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on the waves lapping against the hull, the
ocean currents, the winds all around me. Suddenly, the right word appeared in
my mind. ‘Mizzenmast!’ I yelled.
Annabeth looked at me like I was nuts, but in the next second, the air was
filled with whistling sounds of ropes being snapped taut, canvases unfurling and
wooden pulleys creaking.
Annabeth ducked as a cable flew over her head and wrapped itself around the
bowsprit. ‘Percy, how…’
I didn’t have an answer, but I could feel the ship responding to me as if it were
part of my body. I willed the sails to rise as easily as if I were flexing my arm. I
willed the rudder to turn.
The Queen Anne’s Revenge lurched away from the dock, and by the time the
pirates arrived at the water’s edge, we were already underway, sailing into the
Sea of Monsters.
13
Annabeth Tries to Swim Home
I’d finally found something I was really good at.
The Queen Anne’s Revenge responded to my every command. I knew which
ropes to hoist, which sails to raise, which direction to steer. We ploughed
through the waves at what I figured was about ten knots. I even understood how
fast that was. For a sailing ship, pretty darn fast.
It all felt perfect – the wind in my face, the waves breaking over the prow.
But now that we were out of danger, all I could think about was how much I
missed Tyson, and how worried I was about Grover.
I couldn’t get over how badly I’d messed up on Circe’s Island. If it hadn’t
been for Annabeth, I’d still be a rodent, hiding in a hutch with a bunch of cute
furry pirates. I thought about what Circe had said: See, Percy? You’ve unlocked
your true self!
I still felt changed. Not just because I had a sudden desire to eat lettuce. I felt
jumpy, like the instinct to be a scared little animal was now a part of me. Or
maybe it had always been there. That’s what really worried me.
We sailed through the night.
Annabeth tried to help me keep lookout, but sailing didn’t agree with her.
After a few hours’ rocking back and forth, her face turned the colour of
guacamole and she went below to lie in a hammock.
I watched the horizon. More than once I spotted monsters. A plume of water
as tall as a skyscraper spewed into the moonlight. A row of green spines
slithered across the waves – something maybe thirty metres long, reptilian. I
didn’t really want to know.
Once I saw Nereids, the glowing lady spirits of the sea. I tried to wave at
them, but they disappeared into the depths, leaving me unsure whether they’d
seen me or not.
Sometime after midnight, Annabeth came up on deck. We were just passing a
smoking volcano island. The sea bubbled and steamed around the shore.
‘One of the forges of Hephaestus,’ Annabeth said. ‘Where he makes his metal
monsters.’
‘Like the bronze bulls?’
She nodded. ‘Go around. Far around.’
I didn’t need to be told twice. We steered clear of the island, and soon it was
just a red patch of haze behind us.
I looked at Annabeth. ‘The reason you hate Cyclopes so much … the story
about how Thalia really died. What happened?’
It was hard to see her expression in the dark.
‘I guess you deserve to know,’ she said finally. ‘The night Grover was
escorting us to camp, he got confused, took some wrong turns. You remember he
told you that once?’
I nodded.
‘Well, the worst wrong turn was into a Cyclops’s lair in Brooklyn.’
‘They’ve got Cyclopes in Brooklyn?’ I asked.
‘You wouldn’t believe how many, but that’s not the point. This Cyclops, he
tricked us. He managed to split us up inside this maze of corridors in an old
house in Flatbush. And he could sound like anyone, Percy. Just the way Tyson
did aboard the Princess Andromeda. He lured us, one at time. Thalia thought she
was running to save Luke. Luke thought he heard me scream for help. And me
… I was alone in the dark. I was seven years old. I couldn’t even find the exit.’
She brushed the hair out of her face. ‘I remember finding the main room.
There were bones all over the floor. And there were Thalia and Luke and Grover,
tied up and gagged, hanging from the ceiling like smoked hams. The Cyclops
was starting a fire in the middle of the floor. I drew my knife, but he heard me.
He turned and smiled. He spoke, and somehow he knew my dad’s voice. I guess
he just plucked it out of my mind. He said, “Now, Annabeth, don’t you worry. I
love you. You can stay here with me. You can stay forever.’ ”
I shivered. The way she told it – even now, six years later – freaked me out
worse than any ghost story I’d ever heard. ‘What did you do?’
‘I stabbed him in the foot.’
I stared at her. ‘Are you kidding? You were seven years old and you stabbed a
grown Cyclops in the foot?’
‘Oh, he would’ve killed me. But I surprised him. It gave me just enough time
to run to Thalia and cut the ropes on her hands. She took it from there.’
‘Yeah, but still … that was pretty brave, Annabeth.’
She shook her head. ‘We barely got out alive. I still have nightmares, Percy.
The way that Cyclops talked in my father’s voice. It was his fault we took so
long getting to camp. All the monsters who’d been chasing us had time to catch
up. That’s really why Thalia died. If it hadn’t been for that Cyclops, she’d still be
alive today.’
We sat on the deck, watching the Heracles constellation rise in the night sky.
‘Go below,’ Annabeth told me at last. ‘You need some rest.’
I nodded. My eyes were heavy. But when I got below and found a hammock,
it took me a long time to fall asleep. I kept thinking about Annabeth’s story. I
wondered, if I were her, would I have had enough courage to go on this quest, to
sail straight towards the lair of another Cyclops?
I didn’t dream about Grover.
Instead I found myself back in Luke’s stateroom aboard the Princess
Andromeda. The curtains were open. It was nighttime outside. The air swirled
with shadows. Voices whispered all around me – spirits of the dead.
Beware, they whispered. Traps. Trickery.
Kronos’s golden sarcophagus glowed faintly – the only source of light in the
room.
A cold laugh startled me. It seemed to come from miles below the ship. You
don’t have the courage, young one. You can’t stop me.
I knew what I had to do. I had to open that coffin.
I uncapped Riptide. Ghosts whirled around me like a tornado. Beware!
My heart pounded. I couldn’t make my feet move, but I had to stop Kronos. I
had to destroy whatever was in that box.
Then a girl spoke right next to me, ‘Well, Seaweed Brain?’
I looked over, expecting to see Annabeth, but the girl wasn’t Annabeth. She
wore punk-style clothes with silver chains on her wrists. She had spiky black
hair, dark eyeliner around her stormy blue eyes and a spray of freckles across her
nose. She looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure why.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Are we going to stop him or not?’
I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t move.
The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Fine. Leave it to me and Aegis.’
She tapped her wrist and her silver chains transformed – flattening and
expanding into a huge shield. It was silver and bronze, with the monstrous face
of Medusa protruding from the centre. It looked like a death mask, as if the
gorgon’s real head had been pressed into the metal. I didn’t know if that were
true, or if the shield could really petrify me, but I looked away. Just being near it
made me cold with fear. I got a feeling that in a real fight, the bearer of that
shield would be almost impossible to beat. Any sane enemy would turn and run.
The girl drew her sword and advanced on the sarcophagus. The shadowy
ghosts parted for her, scattering before the terrible aura of her shield.
‘No,’ I tried to warn her.
But she didn’t listen. She marched straight up to the sarcophagus and pushed
aside the golden lid.
For a moment she stood there, gazing down at whatever was in the box.
The coffin began to glow.
‘No.’ The girl’s voice trembled. ‘It can’t be.’
From the depths of the ocean, Kronos laughed so loudly the whole ship
trembled.
‘No!’ The girl screamed as the sarcophagus engulfed her in a blast of golden
light.
‘Ah!’ I sat bolt upright in my hammock.
Annabeth was shaking me. ‘Percy, you were having a nightmare. You need to
get up.’
‘Wh-what is it?’ I rubbed my eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Land,’ she said grimly. ‘We’re approaching the island of the Sirens.’
I could barely make out the island ahead of us – just a dark spot in the mist.
‘I want you to do me a favour,’ Annabeth said. ‘The Sirens … we’ll be in
range of their singing soon.’
I remembered stories about the Sirens. They sang so sweetly their voices
enchanted sailors and lured them to their death.
‘No problem,’ I assured her. ‘We can just stop up our ears. There’s a big tub of
candle wax below deck –’
‘I want to hear them.’
I blinked. ‘Why?’
‘They say the Sirens sing the truth about what you desire. They tell you things
about yourself you didn’t even realize. That’s what’s so enchanting. If you
survive … you become wiser. I want to hear them. How often will I get that
chance?’
Coming from most people, this would’ve made no sense. But Annabeth being
who she was – well, if she could struggle through Ancient Greek architecture
books and enjoy documentaries on the History Channel, I guessed the Sirens
would appeal to her, too.
She told me her plan. Reluctantly, I helped her get ready.
As soon as the rocky coastline of the island came into view, I ordered one of
the ropes to wrap around Annabeth’s waist, tying her to the foremast.
‘Don’t untie me,’ she said, ‘no matter what happens or how much I plead. I’ll
want to go straight over the edge and drown myself.’
‘Are you trying to tempt me?’
‘Ha-ha.’
I promised I’d keep her secure. Then I took two large wads of candle wax,
kneaded them into earplugs, and stuffed my ears.
Annabeth nodded sarcastically, letting me know the earplugs were a real
fashion statement. I made a face at her and turned to the pilot’s wheel.
The silence was eerie. I couldn’t hear anything but the rush of blood in my
head. As we approached the island, jagged rocks loomed out of the fog. I willed
the Queen Anne’s Revenge to skirt around them. If we sailed any closer, those
rocks would shred our hull like blender blades.
I glanced back. At first, Annabeth seemed totally normal. Then she got a
puzzled look on her face. Her eyes widened.
She strained against the ropes. She called my name – I could tell just from
reading her lips. Her expression was clear: she had to get out. This was life or
death. I had to let her out of the ropes right now.
She seemed so miserable it was hard not to cut her free.
I forced myself to look away. I urged the Queen Anne’s Revenge to go faster.
I still couldn’t see much of the island – just mist and rocks – but floating in the
water were pieces of wood and fibreglass, the wreckage of old ships, even some
flotation cushions from aeroplanes.
How could music cause so many lives to veer off course? I mean, sure, there
were some Top Forty songs that made me want to take a fiery nosedive, but still
… What could the Sirens possibly sing about?
For one dangerous moment, I understood Annabeth’s curiosity. I was tempted
to take out the earplugs, just to get a taste of the song. I could feel the Sirens’
voices vibrating in the timbers of the ship, pulsing along with the roar of blood
in my ears.
Annabeth was pleading with me. Tears streamed down her cheeks. She
strained against the ropes, as if they were holding her back from everything she
cared about.
How could you be so cruel? she seemed to be asking me. I thought you were
my friend.
I glared at the misty island. I wanted to uncap my sword, but there was
nothing to fight. How do you fight a song?
I tried hard not to look at Annabeth. I managed it for about five minutes.
That was my big mistake.
When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I looked back and found … a heap of cut
ropes. An empty mast. Annabeth’s bronze knife lay on the deck. Somehow,
she’d managed to wriggle it into her hand. I’d totally forgotten to disarm her.
I rushed to the side of the boat and saw her paddling madly for the island, the
waves carrying her straight towards the jagged rocks.
I screamed her name, but if she heard me, it didn’t do any good. She was
entranced, swimming towards her death.
I looked back at the pilot’s wheel and yelled, ‘Stay!’
Then I jumped over the side.
I sliced into the water and willed the currents to bend around me, making a jet
stream that shot me forward.
I came to the surface and spotted Annabeth, but a wave caught her, sweeping
her between two razor-sharp fangs of rock.
I had no choice. I plunged after her.
I dived under the wrecked hull of a yacht, wove through a collection of
floating metal balls on chains that I realized afterwards were mines. I had to use
all my power over water to avoid getting smashed against the rocks or tangled in
the nets of barbed wire strung just below the surface.
I jetted between the two rock fangs and found myself in a half-moon-shaped
bay. The water was choked with more rocks and ship wreckage and floating
mines. The beach was black volcanic sand.
I looked around desperately for Annabeth.
There she was.
Luckily or unluckily, she was a strong swimmer. She’d made it past the mines
and the rocks. She was almost to the black beach.
Then the mist cleared and I saw them – the Sirens.
Imagine a flock of vultures the size of people – with dirty black plumage, grey
talons and wrinkled pink necks. Now imagine human heads on top of those
necks, but the human heads keep changing.
I couldn’t hear them, but I could see they were singing. As their mouths
moved, their faces morphed into people I knew – my mom, Poseidon, Grover,
Tyson, Chiron. All the people I most wanted to see. They smiled reassuringly,
inviting me forward. But no matter what shape they took, their mouths were
greasy and caked with the remnants of old meals. Like vultures, they’d been
eating with their faces, and it didn’t look like they’d been feasting on Monster
Doughnuts.
Annabeth swam towards them.
I knew I couldn’t let her get out of the water. The sea was my only advantage.
It had always protected me one way or another. I propelled myself forward and
grabbed her ankle.
The moment I touched her, a shock went through my body, and I saw the
Sirens the way Annabeth must’ve been seeing them.
Three people sat on a picnic blanket in Central Park. A feast was spread out
before them. I recognized Annabeth’s dad from photos she’d shown me – an
athletic-looking, sandy-haired guy in his forties. He was holding hands with a
beautiful woman who looked a lot like Annabeth. She was dressed casually – in
blue jeans and a denim shirt and hiking boots – but something about the woman
radiated power. I knew that I was looking at the goddess Athena. Next to them
sat a young man … Luke.
The whole scene glowed in a warm, buttery light. The three of them were
talking and laughing, and when they saw Annabeth, their faces lit up with
delight. Annabeth’s mom and dad held out their arms invitingly. Luke grinned
and gestured for Annabeth to sit next to him – as if he’d never betrayed her, as if
he were still her friend.
Behind the trees of Central Park, a city skyline rose. I caught my breath,
because it was Manhattan, but not Manhattan. It had been totally rebuilt from
dazzling white marble, bigger and grander than ever – with golden windows and
rooftop gardens. It was better than New York. Better than Mount Olympus.
I knew immediately that Annabeth had designed it all. She was the architect
for a whole new world. She had reunited her parents. She had saved Luke. She
had done everything she’d ever wanted.
I blinked hard. When I opened my eyes, all I saw were the Sirens – ragged
vultures with human faces, ready to feed on another victim.
I pulled Annabeth back into the surf. I couldn’t hear her, but I could tell she
was screaming. She kicked me in the face, but I held on.
I willed the currents to carry us out into the bay. Annabeth pummelled and
kicked me, making it hard to concentrate. She thrashed so much we almost
collided with a floating mine. I didn’t know what to do. I’d never get back to the
ship alive if she kept fighting.
We went under and Annabeth stopped struggling. Her expression became
confused. Then our heads broke the surface and she started to fight again.
The water! Sound didn’t travel well underwater. If I could submerge her long
enough, I could break the spell of the music. Of course, Annabeth wouldn’t be
able to breathe, but at the moment, that seemed like a minor problem.
I grabbed her around the waist and ordered the waves to push us down.
We shot into the depths – three metres, six metres. I knew I had to be careful
because I could withstand a lot more pressure than Annabeth. She fought and
struggled for breath as bubbles rose around us.
Bubbles.
I was desperate. I had to keep Annabeth alive. I imagined all the bubbles in
the sea – always churning, rising. I imagined them coming together, being pulled
towards me.
The sea obeyed. There was a flurry of white, a tickling sensation all around
me, and when my vision cleared, Annabeth and I had a huge bubble of air
around us. Only our legs stuck into the water.
She gasped and coughed. Her whole body shuddered, but when she looked at
me, I knew the spell had been broken.
She started to sob – I mean horrible, heartbroken sobbing. She put her head on
my shoulder and I held her.
Fish gathered to look at us – a school of barracudas, some curious marlins.
Scram! I told them.
They swam off, but I could tell they went reluctantly. I swear I understood
their intentions. They were about to start rumours flying around the sea about the
son of Poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay.
‘I’ll get us back to the ship,’ I told her. ‘It’s okay. Just hang on.’
Annabeth nodded to let me know she was better now, then she murmured
something I couldn’t hear because of the wax in my ears.
I made the current steer our weird little air submarine through the rocks and
barbed wire and back towards the hull of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which was
maintaining a slow and steady course away from the island.
We stayed underwater, following the ship, until I judged we had moved out of
earshot of the Sirens. Then I surfaced and our air bubble popped.
I ordered a rope ladder to drop over the side of the ship, and we climbed
aboard.
I kept my earplugs in, just to be sure. We sailed until the island was
completely out of sight. Annabeth sat huddled in a blanket on the forward deck.
Finally she looked up, dazed and sad, and mouthed, Safe.
I took out the earplugs. No singing. The afternoon was quiet except for the
sound of the waves against the hull. The fog had burned away to a blue sky, as if
the island of the Sirens had never existed.
‘You okay?’ I asked. The moment I said it, I realized how lame that sounded.
Of course she wasn’t okay.
‘I didn’t realize,’ she murmured.
‘What?’
Her eyes were the same colour as the mist over the Sirens’ island. ‘How
powerful the temptation would be.’
I didn’t want to admit that I’d seen what the Sirens had promised her. I felt
like a trespasser. But I figured I owed it to Annabeth.
‘I saw the way you rebuilt Manhattan,’ I told her. ‘And Luke and your
parents.’
She blushed. ‘You saw that?’
‘What Luke told you back on the Princess Andromeda, about starting the
world from scratch … that really got to you, huh?’
She pulled her blanket around her. ‘My fatal flaw. That’s what the Sirens
showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris.’
I blinked. ‘That brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘No, Seaweed Brain. That’s hummus. Hubris is worse.’
‘What could be worse than hummus?’
‘Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than
anyone else … even the gods.’
‘You feel that way?’
She looked down. ‘Don’t you ever feel like, what if the world really is messed
up? What if we could do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody
homeless. No more summer reading homework.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did – that’s
why the fire is still burning. That’s why Olympus is still around. But sometimes
you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does:
“If I could tear this all down, I would do it better.” Don’t you ever feel that way?
Like you could do a better job if you ran the world?’
‘Um … no. Me running the world would kind of be a nightmare.’
‘Then you’re lucky. Hubris isn’t your fatal flaw.’
‘What is?’
‘I don’t know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don’t find it and learn to
control it … well, they don’t call it “fatal” for nothing.’
I thought about that. It didn’t exactly cheer me up.
I also noticed Annabeth hadn’t said much about the personal things she would
change – like getting her parents back together, or saving Luke. I understood. I
didn’t want to admit how many times I’d dreamed of getting my own parents
back together.
I pictured my mom, alone in our little apartment on the Upper East Side. I
tried to remember the smell of her blue waffles in the kitchen. It seemed so far
away.
‘So was it worth it?’ I asked Annabeth. ‘Do you feel … wiser?’
She gazed into the distance. ‘I’m not sure. But we have to save the camp. If
we don’t stop Luke…’
She didn’t need to finish. If Luke’s way of thinking could even tempt
Annabeth, there was no telling how many other half-bloods might join him.
I thought about my dream of the girl and the golden sarcophagus. I wasn’t
sure what it meant, but I got the feeling I was missing something. Something
terrible that Kronos was planning. What had the girl seen when she opened that
coffin lid?
Suddenly Annabeth’s eyes widened. ‘Percy.’
I turned.
Up ahead was another blotch of land – a saddle-shaped island with forested
hills and white beaches and green meadows – just like I’d seen in my dreams.
My nautical senses confirmed it. Thirty degrees, thirty-one minutes north,
seventy-five degrees, twelve minutes west.
We had reached the home of the Cyclops.
14
We Meet the Sheep of Doom
When you think ‘monster island’, you think craggy rocks and bones scattered on
the beach like the island of the Sirens.
The Cyclops’s island was nothing like that. I mean, okay, it had a rope bridge
across a chasm, which was not a good sign. You might as well put up a billboard
that said, SOMETHING EVIL LIVES HERE. But, except for that, the place
looked like a Caribbean postcard. It had green fields and tropical fruit trees and
white beaches. As we sailed towards the shore, Annabeth breathed in the sweet
air. ‘The Fleece,’ she said.
I nodded. I couldn’t see the Fleece yet, but I could feel its power. I could
believe it would heal anything, even Thalia’s poisoned tree. ‘If we take it away,
will the island die?’
Annabeth shook her head. ‘It’ll fade. Go back to what it would be normally,
whatever that is.’
I felt a little guilty about ruining this paradise, but I reminded myself we had
no choice. Camp Half-Blood was in trouble. And Tyson … Tyson would still be
with us if it wasn’t for this quest.
In the meadow at the base of the ravine, several dozen sheep were milling
around. They looked peaceful enough, but they were huge – the size of hippos.
Just past them was a path that led up into the hills. At the top of the path, near
the edge of the canyon, was the massive oak tree I’d seen in my dreams.
Something gold glittered in its branches.
‘This is too easy,’ I said. ‘We could just hike up there and take it.’
Annabeth’s eyes narrowed. ‘There’s supposed to be a guardian. A dragon
or…’
That’s when a deer emerged from the bushes. It trotted into the meadow,
probably looking for grass to eat, when the sheep all bleated at once and rushed
the animal. It happened so fast that the deer stumbled and was lost in a sea of
wool and trampling hooves.
Grass and tufts of fur flew into the air.
A second later the sheep all moved away, back to their regular peaceful
wanderings. Where the deer had been was a pile of clean white bones.
Annabeth and I exchanged looks.
‘They’re like piranhas,’ she said.
‘Piranhas with wool. How will we –’
‘Percy!’ Annabeth gasped, grabbing my arm. ‘Look.’
She pointed down the beach, to just below the sheep meadow, where a small
boat had been run aground … the other lifeboat from the CSS Birmingham.
We decided there was no way we could get past the man-eating sheep. Annabeth
wanted to sneak up the path invisibly and grab the Fleece, but in the end I
convinced her that something would go wrong. The sheep would smell her.
Another guardian would appear. Something. And if that happened, I’d be too far
away to help.
Besides, our first job was to find Grover and whoever had come ashore in that
lifeboat – assuming they’d got past the sheep. I was too nervous to say what I
was secretly hoping … that Tyson might still be alive.
We moored the Queen Anne’s Revenge on the back side of the island where
the cliffs rose straight up a good sixty metres feet. I figured the ship was less
likely to be seen there.
The cliffs looked climbable, barely – about as difficult as the lava wall back at
camp. At least it was free of sheep. I hoped that Polyphemus did not also keep
carnivorous mountain goats.
We rowed a lifeboat to the edge of the rocks and made our way up, very
slowly. Annabeth went first because she was the better climber.
We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty
good. Once, I lost my grip and I found myself dangling by one hand from a
ledge fifteen metres above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept
climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot
slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately,
that something was my face.
‘Sorry,’ she murmured.
‘S’okay,’ I grunted, though I’d never really wanted to know what Annabeth’s
sneaker tasted like.
Finally, when my fingers felt like molten lead and my arm muscles were
shaking from exhaustion, we hauled ourselves over the top of the cliff and
collapsed.
‘Ugh,’ I said.
‘Ouch,’ moaned Annabeth.
‘Garrr!’ bellowed another voice.
If I hadn’t been so tired, I would’ve leaped another sixty metres. I whirled
around, but I couldn’t see who’d spoken.
Annabeth clamped her hand over my mouth. She pointed.
The ledge we were sitting on was narrower than I’d realized. It dropped off on
the opposite side, and that’s where the voice was coming from – right below us.
‘You’re a feisty one!’ the deep voice bellowed.
‘Challenge me!’ Clarisse’s voice, no doubt about it. ‘Give me back my sword
and I’ll fight you!’
The monster roared with laughter.
Annabeth and I crept to the edge. We were right above the entrance of the
Cyclops’s cave. Below us stood Polyphemus and Grover, still in his wedding
dress. Clarisse was tied up, hanging upside down over a pot of boiling water. I
was half hoping to see Tyson down there, too. Even if he’d been in danger, at
least I would’ve known he was alive. But there was no sign of him.
‘Hmm,’ Polyphemus pondered. ‘Eat loudmouth girl now or wait for wedding
feast? What does my bride think?’
He turned to Grover, who backed up and almost tripped over his completed
bridal train. ‘Oh, um, I’m not hungry right now, dear. Perhaps –’
‘Did you say bride?’ Clarisse demanded. ‘Who – Grover?’
Next to me, Annabeth muttered, ‘Shut up. She has to shut up.’
Polyphemus glowered. ‘What “Grover”?’
‘The satyr!’ Clarisse yelled.
‘Oh.!’ Grover yelped. ‘The poor thing’s brain is boiling from that hot water.
Pull her down, dear!’
Polyphemus’s eyelid narrowed over his baleful milky eye, as if he were trying
to see Clarisse more clearly.
The Cyclops was an even more horrible sight than he had been in my dreams.
Partly because his rancid smell was now up close and personal. Partly because
he was dressed in his wedding outfit – a crude kilt and shoulder-wrap, stitched
together from baby-blue tuxedoes, as if he’d skinned an entire wedding party.
‘What satyr?’ asked Polyphemus. ‘Satyrs are good eating. You bring me a
satyr?’
‘No, you big idiot!’ bellowed Clarisse. ‘That satyr! Grover! The one in the
wedding dress!’
I wanted to wring Clarisse’s neck, but it was too late. All I could do was watch
as Polyphemus turned and ripped off Grover’s wedding veil – revealing his curly
hair, his scruffy adolescent beard, his tiny horns.
Polyphemus breathed heavily, trying to contain his anger. ‘I don’t see very
well,’ he growled. ‘Not since many years ago when the other hero stabbed me in
eye. But YOU’RE – NO – LADY – CYCLOPS!’
The Cyclops grabbed Grover’s dress and tore it away. Underneath, the old
Grover reappeared in his jeans and T-shirt. He yelped and ducked as the monster
swiped over his head.
‘Stop!’ Grover pleaded. ‘Don’t eat me raw! I – I have a good recipe!’
I reached for my sword, but Annabeth hissed, ‘Wait!’
Polyphemus was hesitating, a boulder in his hand, ready to smash his wouldbe bride.
‘Recipe?’ he asked Grover.
‘Oh y-yes! You don’t want to eat me raw. You’ll get E. coli and botulism and
all sorts of horrible things. I’ll taste much better roasted over a slow fire. With
mango chutney! You could go get some mangoes right now, down there in the
woods. I’ll just wait here.’
The monster pondered this. My heart hammered against my ribs. I figured I’d
die if I charged. But I couldn’t let the monster kill Grover.
‘Roasted satyr with mango chutney,’ Polyphemus mused. He looked back at
Clarisse, still hanging over the pot of boiling water. ‘You a satyr, too?’
‘No, you overgrown pile of dung!’ she yelled. ‘I’m a girl! The daughter of
Ares! Now untie me so I can rip your arms off!’
‘Rip my arms off,’ Polyphemus repeated.
‘And stuff them down your throat!’
‘You got spunk.’
‘Let me down!’
Polyphemus snatched up Grover as if he were a wayward puppy. ‘Have to
graze sheep now. Wedding postponed until tonight. Then we’ll eat satyr for the
main course!’
‘But … you’re still getting married?’ Grover sounded hurt. ‘Who’s the bride?’
Polyphemus looked towards the boiling pot.
Clarisse made a strangled sound. ‘Oh, no! You can’t be serious. I’m not –’
Before Annabeth or I could do anything, Polyphemus plucked her off the rope
like she was a ripe apple, and tossed her and Grover deep into the cave. ‘Make
yourself comfortable! I come back at sundown for big event!’
Then the Cyclops whistled, and a mixed flock of goats and sheep – smaller
than the man-eaters – flooded out of the cave and past their master. As they went
to pasture, Polyphemus patted some on the back and called them by name –
Beltbuster, Tammany, Lockhart and so on.
When the last sheep had waddled out, Polyphemus rolled a boulder in front of
the doorway as easily as I would close a refrigerator door, shutting off the sound
of Clarisse and Grover screaming inside.
‘Mangoes,’ Polyphemus grumbled to himself. ‘What are mangoes?’
He strolled off down the mountain in his baby-blue groom’s outfit, leaving us
alone with a pot of boiling water and a six-ton boulder.
We tried for what seemed like hours, but it was no good. The boulder wouldn’t
move. We yelled into the cracks, tapped on the rock, did everything we could
think of to get a signal to Grover, but if he heard us, we couldn’t tell.
Even if by some miracle we managed to kill Polyphemus, it wouldn’t do us
any good. Grover and Clarisse would die inside that sealed cave. The only way
to move the rock was to have the Cyclops do it.
In total frustration, I stabbed Riptide against the boulder. Sparks flew, but
nothing else happened. A large rock is not the kind of enemy you can fight with
a magic sword.
Annabeth and I sat on the ridge in despair and watched the distant baby-blue
shape of the Cyclops as he moved among his flocks. He had wisely divided his
regular animals from his man-eating sheep, putting each group on either side of
the huge crevice that divided the island. The only way across was the rope
bridge, and the planks were much too far apart for sheep hooves.
We watched as Polyphemus visited his carnivorous flock on the far side.
Unfortunately, they didn’t eat him. In fact, they didn’t seem to bother him at all.
He fed them chunks of mystery meat from a great wicker basket, which only
reinforced the feelings I’d been having since Circe turned me into a guinea pig –
that maybe it was time I joined Grover and became a vegetarian.
‘Trickery,’ Annabeth decided. ‘We can’t beat him by force, so we’ll have to
use trickery.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘What trick?’
‘I haven’t figured that part out yet.’
‘Great.’
‘Polyphemus will have to move the rock to let the sheep inside.’
‘At sunset,’ I said. ‘Which is when he’ll marry Clarisse and have Grover for
dinner. I’m not sure which is grosser.’
‘I could get inside,’ she said, ‘invisibly.’
‘What about me?’
‘The sheep,’ Annabeth mused. She gave me one of those sly looks that always
made me wary. ‘How much do you like sheep?’
‘Just don’t let go!’ Annabeth said, standing invisibly somewhere off to my right.
That was easy for her to say. She wasn’t hanging upside down from the belly of
a sheep.
Now, I’ll admit it wasn’t as hard as I’d thought. I’d crawled under a car before
to change my mom’s oil, and this wasn’t too different. The sheep didn’t care.
Even the Cyclops’s smallest sheep were big enough to support my weight, and
they had thick wool. I just twirled the stuff into handles for my hands, hooked
my feet against the sheep’s thigh bones, and presto – I felt like a baby wallaby,
riding around against the sheep’s chest, trying to keep the wool out of my mouth
and my nose.
In case you’re wondering, the underside of a sheep doesn’t smell that great.
Imagine a winter sweater that’s been dragged through the mud and left in the
laundry hamper for a week. Something like that.
The sun was going down.
No sooner was I in position than the Cyclops roared, ‘Oy! Goaties! Sheepies!’
The flock dutifully began trudging back up the slopes towards the cave.
‘This is it!’ Annabeth whispered. ‘I’ll be close by. Don’t worry.’
I made a silent promise to the gods that if we survived this, I’d tell Annabeth
she was a genius. The frightening thing was, I knew the gods would hold me to
it.
My sheep taxi started plodding up the hill. After a hundred metres, my hands
and feet started to hurt from holding on. I gripped the sheep’s wool more tightly,
and the animal made a grumbling sound. I didn’t blame it. I wouldn’t want
anybody rock climbing in my hair either. But if I didn’t hold on, I was sure I’d
fall off right there in front of the monster.
‘Hasenpfeffer!’ the Cyclops said, patting one of the sheep in front of me.
‘Einstein! Widget – eh there, Widget!’
Polyphemus patted my sheep and nearly knocked me to the ground. ‘Putting
on some extra mutton there?’
Uh-oh, I thought. Here it comes.
But Polyphemus just laughed and swatted the sheep’s rear end, propelling us
forward. ‘Go on, fatty! Soon Polyphemus will eat you for breakfast!’
And just like that, I was in the cave.
I could see the last of the sheep coming inside. If Annabeth didn’t pull off her
distraction soon…
The Cyclops was about to roll the stone back into place, when from
somewhere outside Annabeth shouted, ‘Hello, ugly!’
Polyphemus stiffened. ‘Who said that?’
‘Nobody!’ Annabeth yelled.
That got exactly the reaction she’d been hoping for. The monster’s face turned
red with rage.
‘Nobody!’ Polyphemus yelled back. ‘I remember you!’
‘You’re too stupid to remember anybody,’ Annabeth taunted. ‘Much less
Nobody.’
I hoped to the gods she was already moving when she said that, because
Polyphemus bellowed furiously, grabbed the nearest boulder (which happened to
be his front door) and threw it towards the sound of Annabeth’s voice. I heard
the rock smash into a thousand fragments.
For a terrible moment, there was silence. Then Annabeth shouted, ‘You
haven’t learned to throw any better, either!’
Polyphemus howled. ‘Come here! Let me kill you, Nobody!’
‘You can’t kill Nobody, you stupid oaf,’ she taunted. ‘Come find me!’
Polyphemus barrelled down the hill towards her voice.
Now, the ‘Nobody’ thing wouldn’t have made sense to anybody, but Annabeth
had explained to me that it was the name Odysseus had used to trick Polyphemus
centuries ago, right before he poked the Cyclops’s eye out with a large hot stick.
Annabeth had figured Polyphemus would still have a grudge about that name,
and she was right. In his frenzy to find his old enemy, he forgot about resealing
the cave entrance. Apparently, he didn’t even stop to consider that Annabeth’s
voice was female, whereas the first Nobody had been male. On the other hand,
he’d wanted to marry Grover, so he couldn’t have been all that bright about the
whole male/female thing.
I just hoped Annabeth could stay alive and keep distracting him long enough
for me to find Grover and Clarisse.
I dropped off my ride, patted Widget on the head, and apologized. I searched
the main room, but there was no sign of Grover or Clarisse. I pushed through the
crowd of sheep and goats towards the back of the cave.
Even though I’d dreamed about this place, I had a hard time finding my way
through the maze. I ran down corridors littered with bones, past rooms full of
sheepskin rugs and life-size cement sheep that I recognized as the work of
Medusa. There were collections of sheep T-shirts; large tubs of lanolin cream;
and woolly coats, socks and hats with rams’ horns. Finally, I found the spinning
room, where Grover was huddled in the corner, trying to cut Clarisse’s bonds
with a pair of safety scissors.
‘It’s no good,’ Clarisse said. ‘This rope is like iron!’
‘Just a few more minutes!’
‘Grover,’ she cried, exasperated. ‘You’ve been working at it for hours!’
And then they saw me.
‘Percy?’ Clarisse said. ‘You’re supposed to be blown up!’
‘Good to see you, too. Now hold still while I –’
‘Perrrrrcy!’ Grover bleated and tackled me with a goat-hug. ‘You heard me!
You came!’
‘Yeah, buddy,’ I said. ‘Of course I came.’
‘Where’s Annabeth?’
‘Outside,’ I said. ‘But there’s no time to talk. Clarisse, hold still.’
I uncapped Riptide and sliced off her ropes. She stood stiffly, rubbing her
wrists. She glared at me for a moment, then looked at the ground and mumbled,
‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said. ‘Now, was anyone else on board your lifeboat?’
Clarisse looked surprised. ‘No. Just me. Everybody else aboard the
Birmingham … well, I didn’t even know you guys made it out.’
I looked down, trying not to believe that my last hope of seeing Tyson alive
had just been crushed. ‘Okay. Come on, then. We have to help –’
An explosion echoed through the cave, followed by a scream that told me we
might be too late. It was Annabeth crying out in fear.
15
Nobody Gets the Fleece
‘I got Nobody!’ Polyphemus gloated.
We crept to the cave entrance and saw the Cyclops, grinning wickedly,
holding up empty air. The monster shook his fist, and a baseball cap fluttered to
the ground. There was Annabeth, hanging upside down by her legs.
‘Hah!’ the Cyclops said. ‘Nasty invisible girl! Already got feisty one for wife.
Means you gotta be roasted with mango chutney!’
Annabeth struggled, but she looked dazed. She had a nasty cut on her
forehead. Her eyes were glassy.
‘I’ll rush him,’ I whispered to Clarisse. ‘Our ship is around the back of the
island. You and Grover –’
‘No way,’ they said at the same time. Clarisse had armed herself with a highly
collectible rams-horn spear from the Cyclops’s cave. Grover had found a sheep’s
thigh bone, which he didn’t look too happy about, but he was gripping it like a
club, ready to attack.
‘We’ll take him together,’ Clarisse growled.
‘Yeah,’ Grover said. Then he blinked, like he couldn’t believe he’d just agreed
with Clarisse about something.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Attack plan Macedonia.’
They nodded. We’d all taken the same training courses at Camp Half-Blood.
They knew what I was talking about. They would sneak around either side and
attack the Cyclops from the flanks while I held his attention in the front.
Probably what this meant was that we’d all die instead of just me, but I was
grateful for the help.
I hefted my sword and shouted, ‘Hey, Ugly!’
The giant whirled towards me. ‘Another one? Who are you?’
‘Put down my friend, I’m the one who insulted you.’
‘You are Nobody?’
‘That’s right, you smelly bucket of nose drool!’ It didn’t sound quite as good
as Annabeth’s insults, but it was all I could think of. ‘I’m Nobody and I’m proud
of it! Now, put her down and get over here. I want to stab your eye out again.’
‘RAAAR!’ he bellowed.
The good news: he dropped Annabeth. The bad news: he dropped her head
first onto the rocks, where she lay motionless as a rag doll.
The other bad news: Polyphemus barrelled towards me, five hundred smelly
kilograms of Cyclops that I would have to fight with a very small sword.
‘For Pan!’ Grover rushed in from the right. He threw his sheep bone, which
bounced harmlessly off the monster’s forehead. Clarisse ran in from the left and
set her spear against the ground just in time for the Cyclops to step on it. He
wailed in pain, and Clarisse dived out of the way to avoid getting trampled. But
the Cyclops just plucked out the shaft like a large splinter and kept advancing on
me.
I moved in with Riptide.
The monster made a grab for me. I rolled aside and stabbed him in the thigh.
I was hoping to see him disintegrate, but this monster was much too big and
powerful.
‘Get Annabeth!’ I yelled at Grover.
He rushed over, grabbed her invisibility cap, and picked her up while Clarisse
and I tried to keep Polyphemus distracted.
I have to admit, Clarisse was brave. She charged the Cyclops again and again.
He pounded the ground, stomped at her, grabbed at her, but she was too quick.
And as soon as she made an attack, I followed up by stabbing the monster in the
toe or the ankle or the hand.
But we couldn’t keep this up forever. Eventually we would tire or the monster
would get in a lucky shot. It would only take one hit to kill us.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Grover carrying Annabeth across the rope
bridge. It wouldn’t have been my first choice, given the man-eating sheep on the
other side, but at the moment that looked better than this side of the chasm, and
it gave me an idea.
‘Fall back!’ I told Clarisse.
She rolled away as the Cyclops’s fist smashed the olive tree beside her.
We ran for the bridge, Polyphemus right behind us. He was cut up and
hobbling from so many wounds, but all we’d done was slow him down and
make him mad.
‘Grind you into sheep chow!’ he promised. ‘A thousand curses on Nobody!’
‘Faster!’ I told Clarisse.
We tore down the hill. The bridge was our only chance. Grover had just made
it to the other side and was setting Annabeth down. We had to make it across,
too, before the giant caught us.
‘Grover!’ I yelled. ‘Get Annabeth’s knife!’
His eyes widened when he saw the Cyclops behind us, but he nodded like he
understood. As Clarisse and I scrambled across the bridge, Grover began sawing
at the ropes.
The first strand went snap!
Polyphemus bounded after us, making the bridge sway wildly.
The ropes were now half cut. Clarisse and I dived for solid ground, landing
beside Grover. I made a wild slash with my sword and cut the remaining ropes.
The bridge fell away into the chasm, and the Cyclops howled … with delight,
because he was standing right next to us.
‘Failed!’ he yelled gleefully. ‘Nobody failed!’
Clarisse and Grover tried to charge him, but the monster swatted them aside
like flies.
My anger swelled. I couldn’t believe I’d come this far, lost Tyson, suffered
through so much, only to fail – stopped by a big stupid monster in a baby-blue
tuxedo kilt. Nobody was going to swat down my friends like that! I mean …
nobody, not Nobody. Ah, you know what I mean.
Strength coursed through my body. I raised my sword and attacked, forgetting
that I was hopelessly outmatched. I jabbed the Cyclops in the belly. When he
doubled over I smacked him in the nose with the hilt of my sword. I slashed and
kicked and bashed until the next thing I knew, Polyphemus was sprawled on his
back, dazed and groaning, and I was standing above him, the tip of my sword
hovering over his eye.
‘Uhhhhhhhh,’ Polyphemus moaned.
‘Percy!’ Grover gasped. ‘How did you –’
‘Please, noooo!’ the Cyclops moaned, pitifully staring up at me. His nose was
bleeding. A tear welled in the corner of his half-blind eye. ‘M-m-my sheepies
need me. Only trying to protect my sheep!’
He began to sob.
I had won. All I had to do was stab – one quick strike.
‘Kill him!’ Clarisse yelled. ‘What are you waiting for?’
The Cyclops sounded so heartbroken, just like … like Tyson.
‘He’s a Cyclops!’ Grover warned. ‘Don’t trust him!’
I knew he was right. I knew Annabeth would’ve said the same thing.
But Polyphemus sobbed … and for the first time it sank in that he was a son
of Poseidon, too. Like Tyson. Like me. How could I just kill him in cold blood?
‘We only want the Fleece,’ I told the monster. ‘Will you agree to let us take
it?’
‘No!’ Clarisse shouted. ‘Kill him!’
The monster sniffed. ‘My beautiful Fleece. Prize of my collection. Take it,
cruel human. Take it and go in peace.’
‘I’m going to step back slowly,’ I told the monster. ‘One false move…’
Polyphemus nodded like he understood.
I stepped back … and as fast as a cobra, Polyphemus smacked me to the edge
of the cliff.
‘Foolish mortal!’ he bellowed, rising to his feet. ‘Take my Fleece? Ha! I eat
you first.’
He opened his enormous mouth, and I knew that his rotten molars were the
last things I would ever see.
Then something went whoosh over my head and thump!
A rock the size of a basketball sailed into Polyphemus’s throat – a beautiful
three-pointer, nothing but net. The Cyclops choked, trying to swallow the
unexpected pill. He staggered backwards, but there was no place to stagger. His
heel slipped, the edge of the cliff crumbled, and the great Polyphemus made
chicken-wing motions that did nothing to help him fly as he tumbled into the
chasm.
I turned.
Halfway down the path to the beach, standing completely unharmed in the
midst of a flock of killer sheep, was an old friend.
‘Bad Polyphemus,’ Tyson said. ‘Not all Cyclopes as nice as we look.’
Tyson gave us the short version: Rainbow the hippocampus – who’d apparently
been following us ever since the Long Island Sound, waiting for Tyson to play
with him – had found Tyson sinking beneath the wreckage of the CSS
Birmingham and pulled him to safety. He and Tyson had been searching the Sea
of Monsters ever since, trying to find us, until Tyson caught the scent of sheep
and found this island.
I wanted to hug the big oaf, except he was standing in the middle of killer
sheep. ‘Tyson, thank the gods. Annabeth is hurt!’
‘You thank the gods she is hurt?’ he asked, puzzled.
‘No!’ I knelt beside Annabeth and was worried sick by what I saw. The gash
on her forehead was worse than I’d realized. Her hairline was sticky with blood.
Her skin was pale and clammy.
Grover and I exchanged nervous looks. Then an idea came to me. ‘Tyson, the
Fleece. Can you get it for me?’
‘Which one?’ Tyson said, looking around at the hundreds of sheep.
‘In the tree!’ I said. ‘The gold one!’
‘Oh. Pretty. Yes.’
Tyson lumbered over, careful not to step on the sheep. If any of us had tried to
approach the Fleece, we would’ve been eaten alive, but I guess Tyson smelled
like Polyphemus, because the flock didn’t bother him at all. They just cuddled up
to him and bleated affectionately, as though they expected to get sheep treats
from the big wicker basket. Tyson reached up and lifted the Fleece off its branch.
Immediately the leaves on the oak tree turned yellow. Tyson started wading back
towards me, but I yelled, ‘No time! Throw it!’
The gold ram skin sailed through the air like a glittering shag frisbee. I caught
it with a grunt. It was heavier than I’d expected – about thirty kilograms of
precious gold wool.
I spread it over Annabeth, covering everything but her face, and prayed
silently to all the gods I could think of, even the ones I didn’t like.
Please. Please.
The colour returned to her face. Her eyelids fluttered open. The cut on her
forehead began to close. She saw Grover and said weakly, ‘You’re not …
married?’
Grover grinned. ‘No. My friends talked me out of it.’
‘Annabeth,’ I said, ‘just lay still.’
But, despite our protests she sat up, and I noticed that the cut on her face was
almost completely healed. She looked a lot better. In fact, she shimmered with
health, as if someone had injected her with glitter.
Meanwhile, Tyson was starting to have trouble with the sheep. ‘Down!’ he
told them as they tried to climb him, looking for food. A few were sniffing in our
direction. ‘No, sheepies. This way! Come here!’
They heeded him, but it was obvious they were hungry, and they were starting
to realize Tyson didn’t have any treats for them. They wouldn’t hold out forever
with so much fresh meat nearby.
‘We have to go,’ I said. ‘Our ship is…’ The Queen Anne’s Revenge was a very
long way away. The shortest route was across the chasm, and we’d just
destroyed the only bridge. The only other possibility was through the sheep.
‘Tyson,’ I called, ‘can you lead the flock as far away as possible?’
‘The sheep want food.’
‘I know! They want people food! Just lead them away from the path. Give us
time to get to the beach. Then join us there.’
Tyson looked doubtful, but he whistled. ‘Come, sheepies! Um, people food
this way!’
He jogged off into the meadow, the sheep in pursuit.
‘Keep the Fleece around you,’ I told Annabeth. ‘Just in case you’re not fully
healed yet. Can you stand?’
She tried, but her face turned pale again. ‘Ohh. Not fully healed.’
Clarisse dropped next to her and felt her chest, which made Annabeth gasp.
‘Ribs broken,’ Clarisse said. ‘They’re mending, but definitely broken.’
‘How can you tell?’ I asked.
Clarisse glared at me. ‘Because I’ve broken a few, runt! I’ll have to carry her.’
Before I could argue, Clarisse picked up Annabeth like a sack of flour and
lugged her down to the beach. Grover and I followed.
As soon as we got to the edge of the water, I concentrated on the Queen
Anne’s Revenge. I willed it to raise anchor and come to me. After a few anxious
minutes, I saw the ship rounding the tip of the island.
‘Incoming!’ Tyson yelled. He was bounding down the path to join us, the
sheep about fifty metres behind, bleating in frustration as their Cyclops friend
ran away without feeding them.
‘They probably won’t follow us into the water,’ I told the others. ‘All we have
to do is swim for the ship.’
‘With Annabeth like this?’ Clarisse protested.
‘We can do it,’ I insisted. I was starting to feel confident again. I was back in
my home turf – the sea. ‘Once we get to the ship, we’re home free.’
We almost made it, too.
We were just wading past the entrance to the ravine, when we heard a
tremendous roar and saw Polyphemus, scraped up and bruised but still very
much alive, his baby-blue wedding outfit in tatters, splashing towards us with a
boulder in each hand.
16
I Go Down with the Ship
‘You’d think he’d run out of rocks,’ I muttered.
‘Swim for it!’ Grover said.
He and Clarisse plunged into the surf. Annabeth hung on to Clarisse’s neck
and tried to paddle with one hand, the wet Fleece weighing her down.
But the monster’s attention wasn’t on the Fleece.
‘You, young Cyclops!’ Polyphemus roared. ‘Traitor to your kind!’
Tyson froze.
‘Don’t listen to him!’ I pleaded. ‘Come on.’
I pulled Tyson’s arm, but I might as well have been pulling a mountain. He
turned and faced the older Cyclops. ‘I am not a traitor.’
‘You serve mortals!’ Polyphemus shouted. ‘Thieving humans!’
Polyphemus threw his first boulder. Tyson swatted it aside with his fist.
‘Not a traitor,’ Tyson said. ‘And you are not my kind.’
‘Death or victory!’ Polyphemus charged into the surf, but his foot was still
wounded. He immediately stumbled and fell on his face. That would’ve been
funny, except he started to get up again, spitting salt water and growling.
‘Percy!’ Clarisse yelled. ‘Come on!’
They were almost to the ship with the Fleece. If I could just keep the monster
distracted a little longer…
‘Go,’ Tyson told me. ‘I will hold Big Ugly.’
‘No! He’ll kill you.’ I’d already lost Tyson once. I wasn’t going to lose him
again. ‘We’ll fight him together.’
‘Together,’ Tyson agreed.
I drew my sword.
Polyphemus advanced carefully, limping worse than ever. But there was
nothing wrong with his throwing arm. He chucked his second boulder. I dived to
one side, but I still would’ve been squashed if Tyson’s fist hadn’t blasted the
rock to rubble.
I willed the sea to rise. A six-metre wave surged up, lifting me on its crest. I
rode towards the Cyclops and kicked him in the eye, leaping over his head as the
water blasted him onto the beach.
‘Destroy you!’ Polyphemus spluttered. ‘Fleece stealer!’
‘You stole the Fleece!’ I yelled. ‘You’ve been using it to lure satyrs to their
deaths!’
‘So? Satyrs good eating!’
‘The Fleece should be used to heal! It belongs to the children of the gods!’
‘I am a child of the gods!’ Polyphemus swiped at me, but I sidestepped.
‘Father Poseidon, curse this thief!’ He was blinking hard now, like he could
barely see, and I realized he was targeting by the sound of my voice.
‘Poseidon won’t curse me,’ I said, backing up as the Cyclops grabbed air. ‘I’m
his son, too. He won’t play favourites.’
Polyphemus roared. He ripped an olive tree out of the side of the cliff and
smashed it where I’d been standing a moment before. ‘Humans not the same!
Nasty, tricky, lying!’
Grover was helping Annabeth aboard the ship. Clarisse was waving frantically
at me, telling me to come on.
Tyson worked his way around Polyphemus, trying to get behind him.
‘Young one!’ the older Cyclops called. ‘Where are you? Help me!’
Tyson stopped.
‘You weren’t raised right!’ Polyphemus wailed, shaking his olive tree club.
‘Poor orphaned brother! Help me!’
No one moved. No sound but the ocean and my own heartbeat. Then Tyson
stepped forward, raising his hands defensively. ‘Don’t fight, Cyclops brother. Put
down the –’
Polyphemus spun towards his voice.
‘Tyson!’ I shouted.
The tree struck him with such force it would’ve flattened me into a Percy
pizza with extra olives. Tyson flew backwards, ploughing a trench in the sand.
Polyphemus charged after him, but I shouted, ‘No!’ and lunged as far as I could
with Riptide. I’d hoped to sting Polyphemus in the back of the thigh, but I
managed to leap a little bit higher.
‘Blaaaaah!’ Polyphemus bleated just like his sheep, and swung at me with his
tree.
I dived, but still got raked across the back by a dozen jagged branches. I was
bleeding and bruised and exhausted. The guinea pig inside me wanted to bolt.
But I swallowed down my fear.
Polyphemus swung the tree again, but this time I was ready. I grabbed a
branch as it passed, ignoring the pain in my hands as I was jerked skywards, and
let the Cyclops lift me into the air. At the top of the arc I let go and fell straight
against the giant’s face – landing with both feet on his already damaged eye.
Polyphemus yowled in pain. Tyson tackled him, pulling him down. I landed
next to them – sword in hand, within striking distance of the monster’s heart. But
I locked eyes with Tyson, and I knew I couldn’t do it. It just wasn’t right.
‘Let him go,’ I told Tyson. ‘Run.’
With one last mighty effort, Tyson pushed the cursing older Cyclops away,
and we ran for the surf.
‘I will smash you!’ Polyphemus yelled, doubling over in pain. His enormous
hands cupped over his eye.
Tyson and I plunged into the waves.
‘Where are you?’ Polyphemus screamed. He picked up his tree club and threw
it into the water. It splashed off to our right.
I summoned up a current to carry us, and we started gaining speed. I was
beginning to think we might make it to the ship, when Clarisse shouted from the
deck, ‘Yeah, Jackson! In your face, Cyclops!’
Shut up, I wanted to yell.
‘Rarrr!’ Polyphemus picked up a boulder. He threw it towards the sound of
Clarisse’s voice, but it fell short, narrowly missing Tyson and me.
‘Yeah, yeah!’ Clarisse taunted. ‘You throw like a wimp! Teach you to try
marrying me, you idiot!’
‘Clarisse!’ I yelled, unable to stand it. ‘Shut up!’
Too late. Polyphemus threw another boulder, and this time I watched
helplessly as it sailed over my head and crashed through the hull of the Queen
Anne’s Revenge.
You wouldn’t believe how fast a ship can sink. The Queen Anne’s Revenge
creaked and groaned and listed forward like it was going down a playground
slide.
I cursed, willing the sea to push us faster, but the ship’s masts were already
going under.
‘Dive!’ I told Tyson. And as another rock sailed over our heads, we plunged
underwater.
My friends were sinking fast, trying to swim, without luck, in the bubbly trail of
the ship’s wreckage.
Not many people realize that when a ship goes down, it acts like a sinkhole,
pulling down everything around it. Clarisse was a strong swimmer, but even she
wasn’t making any progress. Grover frantically kicked with his hooves.
Annabeth was hanging on to the Fleece, which flashed in the water like a wave
of new pennies.
I swam towards them, knowing that I might not have the strength to pull my
friends out. Worse, pieces of timber were swirling around them; none of my
power with water would help if I got whacked on the head by a beam.
We need help, I thought.
Yes. Tyson’s voice, loud and clear in my head.
I looked over at him, startled. I’d heard Nereids and other water spirits speak
to me underwater before, but it never occurred to me … Tyson was a son of
Poseidon. We could communicate with each other.
Rainbow, Tyson said.
I nodded, then closed my eyes and concentrated, adding my voice to Tyson’s:
RAINBOW! We need you!
Immediately, shapes shimmered in the darkness below – three horses with fish
tails, galloping upwards faster than dolphins. Rainbow and his friends glanced in
our direction and seemed to read our thoughts. They whisked into the wreckage,
and a moment later burst upwards in a cloud of bubbles – Grover, Annabeth and
Clarisse each clinging to the neck of a hippocampus.
Rainbow, the largest, had Clarisse. He raced over to us and allowed Tyson to
grab hold of his mane. His friend who bore Annabeth did the same for me.
We broke the surface of the water and raced away from Polyphemus’s island.
Behind us, I could hear the Cyclops roaring in triumph, ‘I did it! I finally sank
Nobody!’
I hoped he never found out he was wrong.
We skimmed across the sea as the island shrank to a dot and then disappeared.
‘Did it,’ Annabeth muttered in exhaustion. ‘We…’
She slumped against the neck of the hippocampus and instantly fell asleep.
I didn’t know how far the hippocampi could take us. I didn’t know where we
were going. I just propped up Annabeth so she wouldn’t fall off, covered her in
the Golden Fleece that we’d been through so much to get, and said a silent
prayer of thanks.
Which reminded me … I still owed the gods a debt.
‘You’re a genius,’ I told Annabeth quietly.
Then I put my head against the Fleece, and before I knew it I was asleep, too.
17 We Get a Surprise On Miami Beach
‘Percy, wake up.’
Salt water splashed my face. Annabeth was shaking my shoulder.
In the distance, the sun was setting behind a city skyline. I could see a
beachside highway lined with palm trees, storefronts glowing with red-and-blue
neon, a harbour filled with sailboats and cruise ships.
‘Miami, I think,’ Annabeth said. ‘But the hippocampi are acting funny.’
Sure enough, our fishy friends had slowed down and were whinnying and
swimming in circles, sniffing the water. They didn’t look happy. One of them
sneezed. I could tell what they were thinking.
‘This is as far as they’ll take us,’ I said. ‘Too many humans. Too much
pollution. We’ll have to swim to shore on our own.’
None of us was very psyched about that, but we thanked Rainbow and his
friends for the ride. Tyson cried a little. He unfastened the makeshift saddle pack
he’d made, which contained his tool kit and a couple of other things he’d
salvaged from the Birmingham wreck. He hugged Rainbow around the neck,
gave him a soggy mango he’d picked up on the island and said goodbye.
Once the hippocampi’s white manes disappeared into the sea, we swam for
shore. The waves pushed us forward, and in no time we were back in the mortal
world. We wandered along the cruise line docks, pushing through crowds of
people arriving for vacations. Porters bustled around with carts of luggage. Taxi
drivers yelled at each other in Spanish and tried to cut in line for customers. If
anybody noticed us – five kids dripping wet and looking like they’d just had a
fight with a monster – they didn’t let on.
Now that we were back among mortals, Tyson’s single eye had blurred from
the Mist. Grover had put on his cap and sneakers. Even the Fleece had
transformed from a sheepskin to a red-and-gold high school letter jacket with a
large glittery Omega on the pocket.
Annabeth ran to the nearest newspaper box and checked the date on the Miami
Herald. She cursed. ‘June eighteenth! We’ve been away from camp ten days!’
‘That’s impossible!’ Clarisse said.
But I knew it wasn’t. Time travelled differently in monstrous places.
‘Thalia’s tree must be almost dead,’ Grover wailed. ‘We have to get the Fleece
back tonight!
Clarisse slumped down on the pavement. ‘How are we supposed to do that?’
Her voice trembled. ‘We’re hundreds of miles away. No money. No ride. This is
just like the Oracle said. It’s your fault, Jackson! If you hadn’t interfered –’
‘Percy’s fault?!’ Annabeth exploded. ‘Clarisse, how can you say that? You are
the biggest –’
‘Stop it!’ I said.
Clarisse put her head in her hands. Annabeth stomped her foot in frustration.
The thing was: I’d almost forgotten this quest was supposed to be Clarisse’s.
For a scary moment, I saw things from her point of view. How would I feel if a
bunch of other heroes had butted in and made me look bad?
I thought about what I’d overheard in the boiler room of the CSS Birmingham
– Ares yelling at Clarisse, warning her that she’d better not fail. Ares couldn’t
care less about the camp, but if Clarisse made him look bad…
‘Clarisse,’ I said, ‘what did the Oracle tell you exactly?’
She looked up. I thought she was going to tell me off, but instead she took a
deep breath and recited her prophecy:
‘You shall sail the iron ship with warriors of bone,
You shall find what you seek and make it your own,
But despair for your life entombed within stone,
And fail without friends, to fly home alone.’
‘Ouch,’ Grover mumbled.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No … wait a minute. I’ve got it.’
I searched my pockets for money, and found nothing but a golden drachma.
‘Does anybody have any cash?’
Annabeth and Grover shook their heads morosely. Clarisse pulled a wet
Confederate dollar from her pocket and sighed.
‘Cash?’ Tyson asked hesitantly. ‘Like … green paper?’
I looked at him. ‘Yeah.’
‘Like the kind in duffel bags?’
‘Yeah, but we lost those bags days a-g-g –’
I stuttered to a halt as Tyson rummaged in his saddle pack and pulled out the
airtight bag full of cash that Hermes had included in our supplies.
‘Tyson!’ I said. ‘How did you –’
‘Thought it was a feed bag for Rainbow,’ he said. ‘Found it floating in sea, but
only paper inside. Sorry.’
He handed me the cash. Fives and tens, at least three hundred dollars.
I ran to the kerb and grabbed a taxi that was just letting out a family of cruise
passengers. ‘Clarisse,’ I yelled. ‘Come on. You’re going to the airport. Annabeth,
give her the Fleece.’
I’m not sure which of them looked more stunned as I took the Fleece letter
jacket from Annabeth, tucked the cash into its pocket, and put it in Clarisse’s
arms.
Clarisse said, ‘You’d let me –’
‘It’s your quest,’ I said. ‘We only have enough money for one flight. Besides, I
can’t travel by air. Zeus would blast me into a million pieces. That’s what the
prophecy meant: you’d fail without friends, meaning you’d need our help, but
you’d have to fly home alone. You have to get the Fleece back safely.’
I could see her mind working – suspicious at first, wondering what trick I was
playing, then finally deciding I meant what I said.
She jumped in the cab. ‘You can count on me. I won’t fail.’
‘Not failing would be good.’
The cab peeled out in a cloud of exhaust. The Fleece was on its way.
‘Percy,’ Annabeth said, ‘that was so –’
‘Generous?’ Grover offered.
‘Insane’, Annabeth corrected. ‘You’re betting the lives of everybody at camp
that Clarisse will get the Fleece safely back by tonight?’
‘It’s her quest,’ I said. ‘She deserves a chance.’
‘Percy is nice,’ Tyson said.
‘Percy is too nice,’ Annabeth grumbled, but I couldn’t help thinking that
maybe, just maybe, she was a little impressed. I’d surprised her, anyway. And
that wasn’t easy to do.
‘Come on,’ I told my friends. ‘Let’s find another way home.’
That’s when I turned and found a sword’s point at my throat.
‘Hey, cuz,’ said Luke. ‘Welcome back to the States.’
His bear-man thugs appeared on either side of us. One grabbed Annabeth and
Grover by their T-shirt collars. The other tried to grab Tyson, but Tyson knocked
him into a pile of luggage and roared at Luke.
‘Percy,’ Luke said calmly, ‘tell your giant to back down or I’ll have Oreius
bash your friends’ heads together.’
Oreius grinned and raised Annabeth and Grover off the ground, kicking and
screaming.
‘What do you want, Luke?’ I growled.
He smiled, the scar rippling on the side of his face.
He gestured towards the end of the dock, and I noticed what should’ve been
obvious. The biggest boat in port was the Princess Andromeda.
‘Why, Percy,’ Luke said, ‘I want to extend my hospitality, of course.’
The bear-man twins herded us aboard the Princess Andromeda. They threw us
down on the aft deck in front of a swimming pool with sparkling fountains that
sprayed into the air. A dozen of Luke’s assorted goons – snake people,
Laistrygonians, demigods in battle armour – had gathered to watch us get some
‘hospitality’.
‘And so, the Fleece,’ Luke mused. ‘Where is it?’
He looked us over, prodding my shirt with the tip of his sword, poking
Grover’s jeans.
‘Hey!’ Grover yelled. ‘That’s real goat fur under there!’
‘Sorry, old friend.’ Luke smiled. ‘Just give me the Fleece and I’ll leave you to
return to your, ah, little nature quest.’
‘Blaa-ha-ha!’ Grover protested. ‘Some old friend!’
‘Maybe you didn’t hear me.’ Luke’s voice was dangerously calm. ‘Where – is
– the – Fleece?’
‘Not here,’ I said. I probably shouldn’t have told him anything, but it felt good
to throw the truth in his face. ‘We sent it on ahead of us. You messed up.’
Luke’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re lying. You couldn’t have…’ His face reddened
as a horrible possibility occurred to him. ‘Clarisse?’
I nodded.
‘You trusted … you gave…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Agrius!’
The bear-man flinched. ‘Y-yes?’
‘Get below and prepare my steed. Bring it to the deck. I need to fly to Miami
Airport, fast!’
‘But, boss –’
‘Do it!’ Luke screamed. ‘Or I’ll feed you to the drakon!’
The bear-man gulped and lumbered down the stairs. Luke paced in front of the
swimming pool, cursing in Ancient Greek, gripping his sword so tight his
knuckles turned white.
The rest of Luke’s crew looked uneasy. Maybe they’d never seen their boss so
unhinged before.
I started thinking … If I could use Luke’s anger, get him to talk so everybody
could hear how crazy his plans were…
I looked at the swimming pool, at the fountains spraying mist into the air,
making a rainbow in the sunset. And suddenly I had an idea.
‘You’ve been toying with us all along,’ I said. ‘You wanted us to bring you the
Fleece and save you the trouble of getting it.’
Luke scowled. ‘Of course, you idiot! And you’ve messed everything up!’
‘Traitor!’ I dug my last gold drachma out of my pocket and threw it at Luke.
As I expected, he dodged it easily. The coin sailed into the spray of rainbowcoloured water.
I hoped my prayer would be accepted in silence. I thought with all my heart:
O goddess, accept my offering.
‘You tricked all of us!’ I yelled at Luke. ‘Even DIONYSUS at CAMP HALFBLOOD!’
Behind Luke, the fountain began to shimmer, but I needed everyone’s
attention on me, so I uncapped Riptide.
Luke just sneered. ‘This is no time for heroics, Percy. Drop your puny little
sword, or I’ll have you killed sooner rather than later.’
‘Who poisoned Thalia’s tree, Luke?’
‘I did, of course,’ he snarled. ‘I already told you that. I used elder python
venom, straight from the depths of Tartarus.’
‘Chiron had nothing to do with it?’
‘Ha! You know he would never do that. The old fool wouldn’t have the guts.’
‘You call it guts? Betraying your friends? Endangering the whole camp?’
Luke raised his sword. ‘You don’t understand the half of it. I was going to let
you take the Fleece … once I was done with it.’
That made me hesitate. Why would he let me take the Fleece? He must’ve
been lying. But I couldn’t afford to lose his attention.
‘You were going to heal Kronos,’ I said.
‘Yes! The Fleece’s magic would’ve sped his mending process by tenfold. But
you haven’t stopped us, Percy. You’ve only slowed us down a little.’
‘And so you poisoned the tree, you betrayed Thalia, you set us up – all to help
Kronos destroy the gods.’
Luke gritted his teeth. ‘You know that! Why do you keep asking me?’
‘Because I want everybody in the audience to hear you.’
‘What audience?’
Then his eyes narrowed. He looked behind him and his goons did the same.
They gasped and stumbled back.
Above the pool, shimmering in the rainbow mist, was an Iris-message vision
of Dionysus, Tantalus and the whole camp in the dining pavilion. They sat in
stunned silence, watching us.
‘Well,’ said Dionysus drily, ‘some unplanned dinner entertainment.’
‘Mr D, you heard him,’ I said. ‘You all heard Luke. The poisoning of the tree
wasn’t Chiron’s fault.’
Mr D sighed. ‘I suppose not.’
‘The Iris-message could be a trick,’ Tantalus suggested, but his attention was
mostly on his cheeseburger, which he was trying to corner with both hands.
‘I fear not,’ Mr D said, looking with distaste at Tantalus. ‘It appears I shall
have to reinstate Chiron as activities director. I suppose I do miss the old horse’s
pinochle games.’
Tantalus grabbed the cheeseburger. It didn’t bolt away from him. He lifted it
from the plate and stared at it in amazement, as if it were the largest diamond in
the world. ‘I got it!’ he cackled.
‘We are no longer in need of your services, Tantalus,’ Mr D announced.
Tantalus looked stunned. ‘What? But –’
‘You may return to the Underworld. You are dismissed.’
‘No! But – Nooooooooooo!’
As he dissolved into mist, his fingers clutched at the cheeseburger, trying to
bring it to his mouth. But it was too late. He disappeared and the cheeseburger
fell back onto its plate. The campers exploded into cheering.
Luke bellowed with rage. He slashed his sword through the fountain and the
Iris-message dissolved, but the deed was done.
I was feeling pretty good about myself, until Luke turned and gave me a
murderous look.
‘Kronos was right, Percy. You’re an unreliable weapon. You need to be
replaced.’
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I didn’t have time to think about it. One of
his men blew a brass whistle, and the deck doors flew open. A dozen more
warriors poured out, making a circle around us, the brass tips of their spears
bristling.
Luke smiled at me. ‘You’ll never leave this boat alive.’
18
The Party Ponies Invade
‘One on one,’ I challenged Luke. ‘What are you afraid of?’
Luke curled his lip. The soldiers who were about to kill us hesitated, waiting
for his order.
Before he could say anything, Agrius, the bear-man, burst onto the deck
leading a flying horse. It was the first pure-black pegasus I’d ever seen, with
wings like a giant raven. The pegasus mare bucked and whinnied. I could
understand her thoughts. She was calling Agrius and Luke some names so bad
Chiron would’ve washed her muzzle out with saddle soap.
‘Sir!’ Agrius called, dodging a pegasus hoof. ‘Your steed is ready!’
Luke kept his eyes on me.
‘I told you last summer, Percy,’ he said. ‘You can’t bait me into a fight.’
‘And you keep avoiding one,’ I noticed. ‘Scared your warriors will see you get
whipped?’
Luke glanced at his men, and he saw I’d trapped him. If he backed down now,
he would look weak. If he fought me, he’d lose valuable time chasing after
Clarisse. For my part, the best I could hope for was to distract him, giving my
friends a chance to escape. If anybody could think of a plan to get them out of
there, Annabeth could. On the downside, I knew how good Luke was at swordfighting.
‘I’ll kill you quickly,’ he decided, and raised his weapon. Backbiter was a foot
longer than my own sword. Its blade glinted with an evil grey-and-gold light
where the human steel had been melded with celestial bronze. I could almost feel
the blade fighting against itself, like two opposing magnets bound together. I
didn’t know how the blade had been made, but I sensed a tragedy. Someone had
died in the process. Luke whistled to one of his men, who threw him a round
leather-and-bronze shield.
He grinned at me wickedly.
‘Luke,’ Annabeth said, ‘at least give him a shield.’
‘Sorry, Annabeth,’ he said. ‘You bring your own equipment to this party.’
The shield was a problem. Fighting two-handed with just a sword gives you
more power, but fighting one-handed with a shield gives you better defence and
versatility. There are more moves, more options, more ways to kill. I thought
back to Chiron, who’d told me to stay at camp no matter what, and learn to fight.
Now I was going to pay for not listening to him.
Luke lunged and almost killed me on the first try. His sword went under my
arm, slashing through my shirt and grazing my ribs.
I jumped back, then counter-attacked with Riptide, but Luke slammed my
blade away with his shield.
‘My, Percy,’ Luke chided. ‘You’re out of practice.’
He came at me again with a swipe to the head. I parried, returned with a
thrust. He sidestepped easily.
The cut on my ribs stung. My heart was racing. When Luke lunged again, I
jumped backwards into the swimming pool and felt a surge of strength. I spun
underwater, creating a funnel cloud, and blasted out of the deep end, straight at
Luke’s face.
The force of the water knocked him down, spluttering and blinded. But before
I could strike, he rolled aside and was on his feet again.
I attacked and sliced off the edge of his shield, but that didn’t even faze him.
He dropped to a crouch and jabbed at my legs. Suddenly my thigh was on fire,
with a pain so intense I collapsed. My jeans were ripped above the knee. I was
hurt. I didn’t know how badly. Luke hacked downwards and I rolled behind a
deckchair. I tried to stand, but my leg wouldn’t take the weight.
‘Perrrrrcy!’ Grover bleated.
I rolled again as Luke’s sword slashed the deckchair in half, metal pipes and
all.
I clawed towards the swimming pool, trying hard not to black out. I’d never
make it. Luke knew it, too. He advanced slowly, smiling. The edge of his sword
was tinged with red.
‘One thing I want you to watch before you die, Percy.’ He looked at the bearman Oreius, who was still holding Annabeth and Grover by the necks. ‘You can
eat your dinner now, Oreius. Bon appétit.’
‘He-he! He-he!’ The bear-man lifted my friends and bared his teeth.
That’s when all Hades broke loose.
Whish!
A red-feathered arrow sprouted from Oreius’s mouth. With a surprised look on
his hairy face, he crumpled to the deck.
‘Brother!’ Agrius wailed. He let the pegasus’s reins go slack just long enough
for the black steed to kick him in the head and fly away free over Miami Bay.
For a split second, Luke’s guards were too stunned to do anything except
watch the bear twins’ bodies dissolve into smoke.
Then there was a wild chorus of war cries and hooves thundering against
metal. A dozen centaurs charged out of the main stairwell.
‘Ponies!’ Tyson cried with delight.
My mind had trouble processing everything I saw. Chiron was among the
crowd, but his relatives were almost nothing like him. There were centaurs with
black Arabian stallion bodies, others with gold palomino coats, others with
orange-and-white spots like paint horses. Some wore brightly coloured T-shirts
with Day-Glo letters that said PARTY PONIES: SOUTH FLORIDA CHAPTER.
Some were armed with bows, some with baseball bats, some with paintball guns.
One had his face painted like a Comanche warrior and was waving a large
orange Styrofoam hand making a big Number I. Another was bare-chested and
painted entirely green. A third had googly-eye glasses with the eyeballs
bouncing around on Slinky coils, and one of those baseball caps with soda-canand-straw attachments on either side.
They exploded onto the deck with such ferocity and colour that for a moment
even Luke was stunned. I couldn’t tell whether they had come to celebrate or
attack.
Apparently both. As Luke was raising his sword to rally his troops, a centaur
shot a custom-made arrow with a leather boxing glove on the end. It smacked
Luke in the face and sent him crashing into the swimming pool.
His warriors scattered. I couldn’t blame them. Facing the hooves of a rearing
stallion is scary enough, but when it’s a centaur, armed with a bow and
whooping it up in a soda-drinking hat, even the bravest warrior would retreat.
‘Come get some!’ yelled one of the party ponies.
They let loose with their paintball guns. A wave of blue and yellow exploded
against Luke’s warriors, blinding them and splattering them from head to toe.
They tried to run, only to slip and fall.
Chiron galloped towards Annabeth and Grover, neatly plucked them off the
deck, and deposited them on his back.
I tried to get up, but my wounded leg still felt like it was on fire.
Luke was crawling out of the pool.
‘Attack, you fools!’ he ordered his troops. Somewhere down below deck, a
large alarm bell thrummed.
I knew any second we would be swamped by Luke’s reinforcements. Already,
his warriors were getting over their surprise, coming at the centaurs with swords
and spears drawn.
Tyson slapped half a dozen of them aside, knocking them over the guardrail
into Miami Bay. But more warriors were coming up the stairs.
‘Withdraw, brethren!’ Chiron said.
‘You won’t get away with this, horse man!’ Luke shouted. He raised his
sword, but got smacked in the face with another boxing glove arrow, and sat
down hard in a deckchair.
A palomino centaur hoisted me onto his back. ‘Dude, get your big friend!’
‘Tyson!’ I yelled. ‘Come on!’
Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged
after us. He jumped on the centaur’s back.
‘Dude!’ the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson’s weight. ‘Do the
words “low-carb diet” mean anything to you?’
Luke’s warriors were organizing themselves into a phalanx. But by the time
they were ready to advance, the centaurs had galloped to the edge of the deck
and fearlessly jumped the guardrail, as if it were a steeplechase and not ten
storeys above the ground. I was sure we were going to die. We plummeted
towards the docks, but the centaurs hit the tarmac with hardly a jolt and galloped
off, whooping and yelling taunts at the Princess Andromeda as we raced into the
streets of downtown Miami.
I have no idea what the Miamians thought as we galloped by.
Streets and buildings began to blur as the centaurs picked up speed. It felt as if
space were compacting – as if each centaur step took us miles and miles. In no
time, we’d left the city behind. We raced through marshy fields of high grass and
ponds and stunted trees.
Finally, we found ourselves in a trailer park at the edge of a lake. The trailers
were all horse trailers, tricked out with televisions and mini-refrigerators and
mosquito netting. We were in a centaur camp.
‘Dude!’ said a party pony as he unloaded his gear. ‘Did you see that bear guy?
He was all like, “Whoa, I have an arrow in my mouth!” ’
The centaur with the googly-eye glasses laughed. ‘That was awesome! Head
slam!’
The two centaurs charged at each other full-force and knocked heads, then
went staggering off in different directions with crazy grins on their faces.
Chiron sighed. He set Annabeth and Grover down on a picnic blanket next to
me. ‘I really wish my cousins wouldn’t slam their heads together. They don’t
have the brain cells to spare.’
‘Chiron,’ I said, still stunned by the fact that he was here. ‘You saved us.’
He gave me a dry smile. ‘Well now, I couldn’t very well let you die, especially
since you’ve cleared my name.’
‘But how did you know where we were?’ Annabeth asked.
‘Advanced planning, my dear. I figured you would wash up near Miami if you
made it out of the Sea of Monsters alive. Almost everything strange washes up
near Miami.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ Grover mumbled.
‘No, no,’ Chiron said. ‘I didn’t mean … Oh, never mind. I am glad to see you,
my young satyr. The point is, I was able to eavesdrop on Percy’s Iris-message
and trace the signal. Iris and I have been friends for centuries. I asked her to alert
me to any important communications in this area. It then took no effort to
convince my cousins to ride to your aid. As you see, centaurs can travel quite
fast when we wish to. Distance for us is not the same as distance for humans.’
I looked over at the campfire, where three party ponies were teaching Tyson to
operate a paintball gun. I hoped they knew what they were getting into.
‘So what now?’ I asked Chiron. ‘We just let Luke sail away? He’s got Kronos
aboard that ship. Or parts of him, anyway.’
Chiron knelt, carefully folding his front legs underneath him. He opened the
medicine pouch on his belt and started to treat my wounds. ‘I’m afraid, Percy,
that today has been something of a draw. We didn’t have the strength of numbers
to take that ship. Luke was not organized enough to pursue us. Nobody won.’
‘But we got the Fleece!’ Annabeth said. ‘Clarisse is on her way back to camp
with it right now.’
Chiron nodded, though he still looked uneasy. ‘You are all true heroes. And as
soon as we get Percy fixed up, you must return to Half-Blood Hill. The centaurs
shall carry you.’
‘You’re coming, too?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, Percy. I’ll be relieved to get home. My brethren here simply do not
appreciate Dean Martin’s music. Besides, I must have some words with Mr D.
There’s the rest of the summer to plan. So much training to do. And I want to see
… I’m curious about the Fleece.’
I didn’t know exactly what he meant, but it made me worried about what Luke
had said: I was going to let you take the Fleece … once I was done with it.
Had he just been lying? I’d learned with Kronos there was usually a plan
within a plan. The titan lord wasn’t called the Crooked One for nothing. He had
ways of getting people to do what he wanted without them ever realizing his true
intentions.
Over by the campfire, Tyson let loose with his paintball gun. A blue projectile
splattered against one of the centaurs, hurling him backwards into the lake. The
centaur came up grinning, covered in swamp muck and blue paint, and gave
Tyson two thumbs up.
‘Annabeth,’ Chiron said, ‘perhaps you and Grover would go supervise Tyson
and my cousins before they, ah, teach each other too many bad habits?’
Annabeth met his eyes. Some kind of understanding passed between them.
‘Sure, Chiron,’ Annabeth said. ‘Come on, goat boy.’
‘But I don’t like paintball.’
‘Yes, you do.’ She hoisted Grover to his hooves and led him off towards the
campfire.
Chiron finished bandaging my leg. ‘Percy, I had a talk with Annabeth on the
way here. A talk about the prophecy.’
Uh-oh, I thought.
‘It wasn’t her fault,’ I said. ‘I made her tell me.’
His eyes flickered with irritation. I was sure he was going to chew me out, but
then his look turned to weariness. ‘I suppose I could not expect to keep it secret
forever.’
‘So am I the one in the prophecy?’
Chiron tucked his bandages back into his pouch. ‘I wish I knew, Percy. You’re
not yet sixteen. For now we must simply train you as best we can, and leave the
future to the Fates.’
The Fates. I hadn’t thought about those old ladies in a long time, but as soon
as Chiron mentioned them, something clicked.
‘That’s what it meant,’ I said.
Chiron frowned. ‘That’s what what meant?’
‘Last summer. The omen from the Fates, when I saw them snip somebody’s
life string. I thought it meant I was going to die right away, but it’s worse than
that. It’s got something to do with your prophecy. The death they foretold – it’s
going to happen when I’m sixteen.’
Chiron’s tail whisked nervously in the grass. ‘My boy, you can’t be sure of
that. We don’t even know if the prophecy is about you.’
‘But there isn’t any other half-blood child of the Big Three!’
‘That we know of.’
‘And Kronos is rising. He’s going to destroy Mount Olympus!’
‘He will try,’ Chiron agreed. ‘And Western Civilization along with it, if we
don’t stop him. But we will stop him. You will not be alone in that fight.’
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but I remembered what Annabeth
had told me. It would come down to one hero. One decision that would save or
destroy the West. And I felt sure the Fates had been giving me some kind of
warning about that. Something terrible was going to happen, either to me or to
somebody I was close to.
‘I’m just a kid, Chiron,’ I said miserably. ‘What good is one lousy hero against
something like Kronos?’
Chiron managed a smile. ‘ “What good is one lousy hero?’ Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly
changed the course of your Civil War.’
He pulled an arrow from his quiver and turned the razor-sharp tip so it glinted
in the firelight. ‘Celestial bronze, Percy. An immortal weapon. What would
happen if you shot this at a human?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It would pass right through.’
‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Humans don’t exist on the same level as the immortals.
They can’t even be hurt by our weapons. But you, Percy – you are part god, part
human. You live in both worlds. You can be harmed by both, and you can affect
both. That’s what makes heroes so special. You carry the hopes of humanity into
the realm of the eternal. Monsters never die. They are reborn from the chaos and
barbarism that is always bubbling underneath civilization, the very stuff that
makes Kronos stronger. They must be defeated again and again, kept at bay.
Heroes embody that struggle. You fight the battles humanity must win, every
generation, in order to stay human. Do you understand?’
‘I … I don’t know.’
‘You must try, Percy. Because whether or not you are the child of the
prophecy, Kronos thinks you might be. And, after today, he will finally despair
of turning you to his side. That is the only reason he hasn’t killed you yet, you
know. As soon as he’s sure he can’t use you, he will destroy you.’
‘You talk like you know him.’
Chiron pursed his lips. ‘I do know him.’
I stared at him. I sometimes forgot just how old Chiron was. ‘Is that why Mr
D blamed you when the tree was poisoned? Why you said some people don’t
trust you?’
‘Indeed.’
‘But Chiron … I mean, come on! Why would they think you’d ever betray the
camp for Kronos?’
Chiron’s eyes were deep brown, full of thousands of years of sadness. ‘Percy,
remember your training. Remember your study of mythology. What is my
connection to the titan lord?’
I tried to think, but I’d always got my mythology mixed up. Even now, when
it was so real, so important to my own life, I had trouble keeping all the names
and facts straight. I shook my head. ‘You, uh, owe Kronos a favour or
something? He spared your life?’
‘Percy,’ Chiron said, his voice impossibly soft. ‘The titan Kronos is my
father.’
19 The Chariot Race Ends with a Bang
We arrived in Long Island just after Clarisse, thanks to the centaurs’ travel
powers. I rode on Chiron’s back, but we didn’t talk much, especially not about
Kronos. I knew it had been difficult for Chiron to tell me. I didn’t want to push
him with more questions. I mean, I’ve met plenty of embarrassing parents, but
Kronos, the evil titan lord who wanted to destroy Western Civilization? Not the
kind of dad you invited to school for career day.
When we got to camp, the centaurs were anxious to meet Dionysus. They’d
heard he threw some really wild parties, but they were disappointed. The wine
god was in no mood to celebrate as the whole camp gathered at the top of HalfBlood Hill.
The camp had been through a hard two weeks. The arts and crafts cabin had
burned to the ground from an attack by a Draco Aionius (which as near as I
could figure was Latin for ‘really-big-lizard-with-breath-that-blows-stuff-up’).
The Big House’s rooms were overflowing with wounded. The kids in the Apollo
cabin, who were the best healers, had been working overtime performing first
aid. Everybody looked weary and battered as we crowded around Thalia’s tree.
The moment Clarisse draped the Golden Fleece over the lowest bough, the
moonlight seemed to brighten, turning from grey to liquid silver. A cool breeze
rustled in the branches and rippled through the grass, all the way into the valley.
Everything came into sharper focus – the glow of the fireflies down in the
woods, the smell of the strawberry fields, the sound of the waves on the beach.
Gradually, the needles on the pine tree started turning from brown to green.
Everybody cheered. It was happening slowly, but there could be no doubt –
the Fleece’s magic was seeping into the tree, filling it with new power and
expelling the poison.
Chiron ordered a twenty-four/seven guard duty on the hilltop, at least until he
could find an appropriate monster to protect the Fleece. He said he’d place an ad
in Olympus Weekly right away.
In the meantime, Clarisse was carried on her cabin mates’ shoulders down to
the amphitheatre, where she was honoured with a laurel wreath and a lot of
celebrating around the campfire.
Nobody gave Annabeth or me a second look. It was as. if we’d never left. In a
way, I guess that was the best thank-you anyone could give us, because if they
admitted we’d snuck out of camp to do the quest, they’d have to expel us. And,
really, I didn’t want any more attention. It felt good to be just one of the campers
for once.
Later that night, as we were roasting marshmallows and listening to the Stoll
brothers tell us a ghost story about an evil king who was eaten alive by demonic
breakfast pastries, Clarisse shoved me from behind and whispered in my ear,
‘Just because you were cool one time, Jackson, don’t think you’re off the hook
with Ares. I’m still waiting for the right opportunity to pulverize you.’
I gave her a grudging smile.
‘What?’ she demanded.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just good to be home.’
The next morning, after the party ponies headed back to Florida, Chiron made a
surprise announcement: the chariot races would go ahead as scheduled. We’d all
figured they were history now that Tantalus was gone, but completing them did
feel like the right thing to do, especially now that Chiron was back and the camp
was safe.
Tyson wasn’t too keen on the idea of getting back in a chariot after our first
experience, but he was happy to let me team up with Annabeth. I would drive,
Annabeth would defend, and Tyson would act as our pit crew. While I worked
with the horses, Tyson fixed up Athena’s chariot and added a whole bunch of
special modifications.
We spent the next two days training like crazy. Annabeth and I agreed that if
we won, the prize of no chores for the rest of the month would be split between
our two cabins. Since Athena had more campers, they would get most of the
time off, which was fine by me. I didn’t care about the prize. I just wanted to
win.
The night before the race, I stayed late at the stables. I was talking to our
horses, giving them one final brushing, when somebody right behind me said,
‘Fine animals, horses. Wish I’d thought of them.’
A middle-aged guy in a postal carrier outfit was leaning against the stable
door. He was slim, with curly black hair under his white pith helmet, and he had
a mailbag slung over his shoulder.
‘Hermes?’ I stammered.
‘Hello, Percy. Didn’t recognize me without my jogging clothes?’
‘Uh…’ I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to kneel or buy stamps from him
or what. Then it occurred to me why he must be here. ‘Oh, listen, Lord Hermes,
about Luke…’
The god arched his eyebrows.
‘Uh, we saw him, all right,’ I said, ‘but –’
‘You weren’t able to talk sense into him?’
‘Well, we kind of tried to kill each other in a duel to the death.’
‘I see. You tried the diplomatic approach.’
‘I’m really sorry. I mean, you gave us those awesome gifts and everything.
And I know you wanted Luke to come back. But … he’s turned bad. Really bad.
He said he feels like you abandoned him.’
I waited for Hermes to get angry. I figured he’d turn me into a hamster or
something, and I did not want to spend any more time as a rodent.
Instead, he just sighed. ‘Do you ever feel your father abandoned you, Percy?’
Oh, man.
I wanted to say, ‘Only a few hundred times a day.’ I hadn’t spoken to Poseidon
since last summer. I’d never even been to his underwater palace. And then there
was the whole thing with Tyson – no warning, no explanation. Just boom, you
have a brother. You’d think that deserved a little heads-up phone call or
something.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I realized I did want recognition
for the quest I’d completed, but not from the other campers. I wanted my dad to
say something. To notice me.
Hermes readjusted the mailbag on his shoulder. ‘Percy, the hardest part about
being a god is that you must often act indirectly, especially when it comes to
your own children. If we were to intervene every time our children had a
problem … well, that would only create more problems and more resentment.
But I believe if you give it some thought, you will see that Poseidon has been
paying attention to you. He has answered your prayers. I can only hope that
some day, Luke may realize the same about me. Whether you feel like you
succeeded or not, you reminded Luke who he was. You spoke to him.’
‘I tried to kill him.’
Hermes shrugged. ‘Families are messy. Immortal families are eternally messy.
Sometimes the best we can do is to remind each other that we’re related, for
better or worse … and try to keep the maiming and killing to a minimum.’
It didn’t sound like much of a recipe for the perfect family. Then again, as I
thought about my quest, I realized maybe Hermes was right. Poseidon had sent
the hippocampi to help us. He’d given me powers over the sea that I’d never
known about before. And there was Tyson. Had Poseidon brought us together on
purpose? How many times had Tyson saved my life this summer?
In the distance, the conch horn sounded, signalling curfew.
‘You should get to bed,’ Hermes said. ‘I’ve helped you get into quite enough
trouble this summer already. I really only came to make this delivery.’
‘A delivery?’
‘I am the messenger of the gods, Percy.’ He took an electronic signature pad
from his mailbag and handed it to me. ‘Sign there, please.’
I picked up the stylus before realizing it was entwined with a pair of tiny
green snakes. ‘Ah!’ I dropped the pad.
Ouch, said George.
Really, Percy, Martha scolded. Would you want to be dropped on the floor of a
horse stable?
‘Oh, uh, sorry.’ I didn’t much like touching snakes, but I picked up the pad
and the stylus again. Martha and George wriggled under my fingers, forming a
kind of pencil grip like the ones my special ed teacher made me use in second
grade.
Did you bring me a rat? George asked.
‘No…’ I said. ‘Uh, we didn’t find any.’
What about a guinea pig?
George! Martha chided. Don’t tease the boy.
I signed my name and gave the pad back to Hermes.
In exchange, he handed me a sea-blue envelope.
My fingers trembled. Even before I opened it, I could tell it was from my
father. I could sense his power in the cool blue paper, as if the envelope itself had
been folded out of an ocean wave.
‘Good luck tomorrow,’ Hermes said. ‘Fine team of horses you have there,
though you’ll excuse me if I root for the Hermes cabin.’
And don’t be too discouraged when you read it, dear, Martha told me. He does
have your interests at heart.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
Don’t mind her, George said. And next time, remember, snakes work for tips.
‘Enough, you two,’ Hermes said. ‘Goodbye, Percy. For now.’
Small white wings sprouted from his pith helmet. He began to glow, and I
knew enough about the gods to avert my eyes before he revealed his true divine
form. With a brilliant white flash he was gone, and I was alone with the horses.
I stared at the blue envelope in my hands. It was addressed in strong but
elegant handwriting that I’d seen once before, on a package Poseidon had sent
me last summer.
Percy Jackson
c/o Camp Half-Blood
Farm Road 3.141
Long Island, New york 11954
An actual letter from my father. Maybe he would tell me I’d done a good job
getting the Fleece. He’d explain about Tyson, or apologize for not talking to me
sooner. There were so many things that I wanted that letter to say.
I opened the envelope and unfolded the paper.
Two simple words were printed in the middle of the page:
Brace yourself.
The next morning, everybody was buzzing about the chariot race, though they
kept glancing nervously towards the sky like they expected to see Stymphalian
birds gathering. None did. It was a beautiful summer day with blue sky and
plenty of sunshine. The camp had started to look the way it should look: the
meadows were green and lush; the white columns gleamed on the Greek
buildings; dryads played happily in the woods.
And I was miserable. I’d been lying awake all night, thinking about
Poseidon’s warning.
Brace yourself.
I mean, he goes to the trouble of writing a letter, and he writes two words?
Martha the snake had told me not to feel disappointed. Maybe Poseidon had a
reason for being so vague. Maybe he didn’t know exactly what he was warning
me about, but he sensed something big was about to happen – something that
could completely knock me off my feet unless I was prepared. It was hard, but I
tried to turn my thoughts to the race.
As Annabeth and I drove onto the track, I couldn’t help admiring the work
Tyson had done on the Athena chariot. The carriage gleamed with bronze
reinforcements. The wheels were realigned with magical suspension so we
glided along with hardly a bump. The rigging for the horses was so perfectly
balanced that the team turned at the slightest tug of the reins.
Tyson had also made us two javelins, each with three buttons on the shaft. The
first button primed the javelin to explode on impact, releasing razor wire that
would tangle and shred an opponent’s wheels. The second button produced a
blunt (but still very painful) bronze spearhead designed to knock a driver out of
his carriage. The third button brought up a grappling hook that could be used to
lock on to an enemy’s chariot or push it away.
I figured we were in pretty good shape for the race, but Tyson still warned me
to be careful. The other chariot teams had plenty of tricks up their togas.
‘Here,’ he said, just before the race began.
He handed me a wristwatch. There wasn’t anything special about it – just a
white-and-silver clock face, a black leather strap – but as soon as I saw it I
realized that this was what I’d seen him tinkering on all summer.
I didn’t usually like to wear watches. Who cared what time it was? But I
couldn’t say no to Tyson.
‘Thanks, man.’ I put it on and found it was surprisingly light and comfortable.
I could hardly tell I was wearing it.
‘Didn’t finish in time for the trip,’ Tyson mumbled. ‘Sorry, sorry.’
‘Hey, man. No big deal.’
‘If you need protection in race,’ he advised, ‘hit the button.’
‘Ah, okay.’ I didn’t see how keeping time was going to help a whole lot, but I
was touched that Tyson was concerned. I promised him I’d remember the watch.
‘And, hey, um, Tyson…’
He looked at me.
‘I wanted to say, well…’ I tried to figure out how to apologize for getting
embarrassed about him before the quest, for telling everyone he wasn’t my real
brother. It wasn’t easy to find the words.
‘I know what you will tell me,’ Tyson said, looking ashamed. ‘Poseidon did
care for me after all.’
‘Uh, well –’
‘He sent you to help me. Just what I asked for.’
I blinked. ‘You asked Poseidon for … me?’
‘For a friend,’ Tyson said, twisting his shirt in his hands. ‘Young Cyclopes
grow up alone on the streets, learn to make things out of scraps. Learn to
survive.’
‘But that’s so cruel!’
He shook his head earnestly. ‘Makes us appreciate blessings, not be greedy
and mean and fat like Polyphemus. But I got scared. Monsters chased me so
much, clawed me sometimes –’
‘The scars on your back?’
A tear welled in his eye. ‘Sphinx on Seventy-second Street. Big bully. I prayed
to Daddy for help. Soon the people at Meriwether found me. Met you. Biggest
blessing ever. Sorry I said Poseidon was mean. He sent me a brother.’
I stared at the watch that Tyson had made me.
‘Percy!’ Annabeth called. ‘Come on!’
Chiron was at the starting line, ready to blow the conch.
‘Tyson…’ I said.
‘Go,’ Tyson said. ‘You will win!’
‘I – yeah, okay, big guy. We’ll win this one for you.’ I climbed on board the
chariot and got into position just as Chiron blew the starting signal.
The horses knew what to do. We shot down the track so fast I would’ve fallen
out if my arms hadn’t been wrapped in the leather reins. Annabeth held on tight
to the rail. The wheels glided beautifully. We took the first turn a full chariotlength ahead of Clarisse, who was busy trying to fight off a javelin attack from
the Stoll brothers in the Hermes chariot.
‘We’ve got ’em!’ I yelled, but I spoke too soon.
‘Incoming!’ Annabeth yelled. She threw her first javelin in grappling-hook
mode, knocking away a lead-weighted net that would have entangled us both.
Apollo’s chariot had come up on our flank. Before Annabeth could rearm
herself, the Apollo warrior threw a javelin into our right wheel. The javelin
shattered, but not before snapping some of our spokes. Our chariot lurched and
wobbled. I was sure the wheel would collapse altogether, but we somehow kept
going.
I urged the horses to keep up the speed. We were now neck and neck with
Apollo. Hephaestus was coming up close behind. Ares and Hermes were falling
behind, riding side by side as Clarisse went sword-on-javelin with Connor Stoll.
If we took one more hit to our wheel, I knew we would capsize.
‘You’re mine!’ the driver from Apollo yelled. He was a first-year camper. I
didn’t remember his name, but he sure was confident.
‘Yeah, right!’ Annabeth yelled back.
She picked up her second javelin – a real risk considering we still had one full
lap to go – and threw it at the Apollo driver.
Her aim was perfect. The javelin grew a heavy spear point just as it caught the
driver in the chest, knocking him against his teammate and sending them both
toppling out of their chariot in a backwards somersault. The horses felt the reins
go slack and went crazy, riding straight for the crowd. Campers scrambled for
cover as the horses leaped the corner of the stands and the golden chariot flipped
over. The horses galloped back towards their stable, dragging the upside-down
chariot behind them.
I held our own chariot together through the second turn, despite the groaning
of the right wheel. We passed the starting line and thundered into our final lap.
The axle creaked and moaned. The wobbling wheel was making us lose speed,
even though the horses were responding to my every command, running like a
well-oiled machine.
The Hephaestus team was still gaining.
Beckendorf grinned as he pressed a button on his command console. Steel
cables shot out of the front of his mechanical horses, wrapping around our back
rail. Our chariot shuddered as Beckendorf’s winch system started working –
pulling us backwards while Beckendorf pulled himself forward.
Annabeth cursed and drew her knife. She hacked at the cables but they were
too thick.
‘Can’t cut them!’ she yelled.
The Hephaestus chariot was now dangerously close, their horses about to
trample us underfoot.
‘Switch with me!’ I told Annabeth. ‘Take the reins!’
‘But –’
‘Trust me!’
She pulled herself to the front and grabbed the reins. I turned, trying hard to
keep my footing, and uncapped Riptide.
I slashed down and the cables snapped like kite string. We lurched forward,
but Beckendorf’s driver just swung his chariot to our left and pulled up next to
us. Beckendorf drew his sword. He slashed at Annabeth and I parried the blade
away.
We were coming up on the last turn. We’d never make it. I needed to disable
the Hephaestus chariot and get it out of the way, but I had to protect Annabeth,
too. Just because Beckendorf was a nice guy didn’t mean he wouldn’t send us
both to the infirmary if we let our guard down.
We were neck and neck now, Clarisse coming up from behind, making up for
lost time.
‘See ya, Percy!’ Beckendorf yelled. ‘Here’s a little parting gift!’
He threw a leather pouch into our chariot. It stuck to the floor immediately
and began billowing green smoke.
‘Greek fire!’ Annabeth yelled.
I cursed. I’d heard stories about what Greek fire could do. I figured we had
maybe ten seconds before it exploded.
‘Get rid of it!’ Annabeth shouted, but I couldn’t. Hephaestus’s chariot was still
alongside, waiting until the last second to make sure their little present blew up.
Beckendorf was keeping me busy with his sword. If I let my guard down long
enough to deal with the Greek fire, Annabeth would get sliced and we’d crash
anyway. I tried to kick the leather pouch away with my foot, but I couldn’t. It
was stuck fast.
Then I remembered the watch.
I didn’t know how it could help, but I managed to punch the stopwatch button.
Instantly, the watch changed. It expanded, the metal rim spiralling outwards like
an old-fashioned camera shutter, a leather strap wrapping around my forearm
until I was holding a round war shield a metre wide, the inside soft leather, the
outside polished bronze engraved with designs I didn’t have time to examine.
All I knew: Tyson had come through. I raised the shield and Beckendorf’s
sword clanged against it. His blade shattered.
‘What?’ he shouted. ‘How –’
He didn’t have time to say more because I knocked him in the chest with my
new shield and sent him flying out of his chariot, tumbling in the dirt.
I was about to use Riptide to slash at the driver when Annabeth yelled,
‘Percy!’
The Greek fire was shooting sparks. I shoved the tip of my sword under the
leather pouch and flipped it up like a spatula. The firebomb dislodged and flew
into the Hephaestus chariot at the driver’s feet. He yelped.
In a split second the driver made the right choice: he dived out of the chariot,
which careened away and exploded in green flames. The metal horses seemed to
short-circuit. They turned and dragged the burning wreckage back towards
Clarisse and the Stoll brothers, who had to swerve to avoid it.
Annabeth pulled the reins for the last turn. I held on, sure we would capsize,
but somehow she brought us through and spurred the horses across the finish
line. The crowd roared.
Once the chariot stopped, our friends mobbed us. They started chanting our
names, but Annabeth yelled over the noise, ‘Hold up! Listen! It wasn’t just us!’
The crowd didn’t want to be quiet, but Annabeth made herself heard: ‘We
couldn’t have done it without somebody else! We couldn’t have won this race or
got the Fleece or saved Grover or anything! We owe our lives to Tyson,
Percy’s…’
‘Brother!’ I said, loud enough for everybody to hear. ‘Tyson, my baby
brother.’
Tyson blushed. The crowd cheered. Annabeth planted a kiss on my cheek. The
roaring got a lot louder after that. The entire Athena cabin lifted me and
Annabeth and Tyson onto their shoulders and carried us towards the winner’s
platform, where Chiron was waiting to bestow the laurel wreaths.
20
The Fleece Works Its Magic Too Well
That afternoon was one of the happiest I’d ever spent at camp, which maybe
goes to show, you never know when your world is about to be rocked to pieces.
Grover announced that he’d be able to spend the rest of the summer with us
before resuming his quest for Pan. His bosses at the Council of Cloven Elders
were so impressed that he hadn’t got himself killed and had cleared the way for
future searchers, that they granted him a two-month furlough and a new set of
reed pipes. The only bad news: Grover insisted on playing those pipes all
afternoon long, and his musical skills hadn’t improved much. He played
‘YMCA’, and the strawberry plants started going crazy, wrapping around our
feet like they were trying to strangle us. I guess I couldn’t blame them.
Grover told me he could dissolve the empathy link between us, now that we
were face to face, but I told him I’d just as soon keep it if that was okay with
him. He put down his reed pipes and stared at me. ‘But, if I get in trouble again,
you’ll be in danger, Percy! You could die!’
‘If you get in trouble again, I want to know about it. And I’ll come help you
again, G-man. I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
In the end he agreed not to break the link. He went back to playing ‘YMCA’
for the strawberry plants. I didn’t need an empathy link with the plants to know
how they felt about it.
Later on during archery class, Chiron pulled me aside and told me he’d fixed my
problems with Meriwether Prep. The school no longer blamed me for destroying
their gymnasium. The police were no longer looking for me.
‘How did you manage that?’ I asked.
Chiron’s eyes twinkled. ‘I merely suggested that the mortals had seen
something different on that day – a furnace explosion that was not your fault.’
‘You just said that and they bought it?’
‘I manipulated the Mist. Some day, when you’re ready, I’ll show you how it’s
done.’
‘You mean, I can go back to Meriwether next year?’
Chiron raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh, no, they’ve still expelled you. Your
headmaster, Mr Bonsai, said you had – how did he put it? – un-groovy karma
that disrupted the school’s educational aura. But you’re not in any legal trouble,
which was a relief to your mother. Oh, and speaking of your mother…’
He unclipped his cell phone from his quiver and handed it to me. ‘It’s high
time you called her.’
The worst part was the beginning – the ‘Percy-Jackson-what-were-you-thinkingdo-you-have-any-idea-how-worried-I-was-sneaking-off-to-camp-withoutpermission-going-on-dangerous-quests-and-scaring-me-half-to-death’ part.
But finally she paused to catch her breath. ‘Oh, I’m just glad you’re safe!’
That’s the great thing about my mom. She’s no good at staying angry. She
tries, but it just isn’t in her nature.
‘I’m sorry, Mom,’ I told her. ‘I won’t scare you again.’
‘Don’t promise me that, Percy. You know very well it will only get worse.’
She tried to sound casual about it, but I could tell she was pretty shaken up.
I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I knew she was right.
Being a half-blood, I would always be doing things that scared her. And, as I got
older, the dangers would just get greater.
‘I could come home for a while,’ I offered.
‘No, no. Stay at camp. Train. Do what you need to do. But you will come
home for the next school year?’
‘Yeah, of course. Uh, if there’s any school that will take me.’
‘Oh, we’ll find something, dear,’ my mother sighed. ‘Some place where they
don’t know us yet.’
As for Tyson, the campers treated him like a hero. I would’ve been happy to
have him as my cabin mate forever, but that evening, as we were sitting on a
sand dune overlooking the Long Island Sound, he made an announcement that
completely took me by surprise.
‘Dream came from Daddy last night,’ he said. ‘He wants me to visit.’
I wondered if he was kidding, but Tyson really didn’t know how to kid.
‘Poseidon sent you a dream message?’
Tyson nodded. ‘Wants me to go underwater for the rest of the summer. Learn
to work at Cyclopes’ forges. He called it an inter – an intern –’
‘An internship?’
‘Yes.’
I let that sink in. I’ll admit, I felt a little jealous. Poseidon had never invited
me underwater. But then I thought, Tyson was going? Just like that?
‘When would you leave?’ I asked.
‘Now.’
‘Now. Like … now now?’
‘Now.’
I stared out at the waves in the Long Island Sound. The water was glistening
red in the sunset.
‘I’m happy for you, big guy,’ I managed. ‘Seriously.’
‘Hard to leave my new brother,’ he said with a tremble in his voice. ‘But I
want to make things. Weapons for the camp. You will need them.’
Unfortunately, I knew he was right. The Fleece hadn’t solved all the camp’s
problems. Luke was still out there, gathering an army aboard the Princess
Andromeda. Kronos was still re-forming in his golden coffin. Eventually, we
would have to fight them.
‘You’ll make the best weapons ever,’ I told Tyson. I held up my watch
proudly. ‘I bet they’ll tell good time, too.’
Tyson sniffled. ‘Brothers help each other.’
‘You’re my brother,’ I said. ‘No doubt about it.’
He patted me on the back so hard he almost knocked me down the sand dune.
Then he wiped a tear from his cheek and stood to go. ‘Use the shield well.’
‘I will, big guy.’
‘Save your life some day.’
The way he said it, so matter-of-fact, I wondered if that Cyclops eye of his
could see into the future.
He headed down to the beach and whistled. Rainbow, the hippocampus, burst
out of the waves. I watched the two of them ride off together into the realm of
Poseidon.
Once they were gone, I looked down at my new wristwatch. I pressed the
button and the shield spiralled out to full size. Hammered into the bronze were
pictures in Ancient Greek style, scenes from our adventures this summer. There
was Annabeth slaying a Laistrygonian dodgeball player, me fighting the bronze
bulls on Half-Blood Hill, Tyson riding Rainbow towards the Princess
Andromeda, the CSS Birmingham blasting its cannons at Charybdis. I ran my
hand across a picture of Tyson battling the Hydra as he held aloft a box of
Monster Doughnuts.
I couldn’t help feeling sad. I knew Tyson would have an awesome time under
the ocean. But I’d miss everything about him – his fascination with horses, the
way he could fix chariots or crumple metal with his bare hands, or tie bad guys
into knots. I’d even miss him snoring like an earthquake in the next bunk all
night.
‘Hey, Percy.’
I turned.
Annabeth and Grover were standing at the top of the sand dune. I guess
maybe I had some sand in my eyes, because I was blinking a lot.
‘Tyson…’ I told them. ‘He had to…’
‘We know,’ Annabeth said softly. ‘Chiron told us.’
‘Cyclopes’ forges.’ Grover shuddered. ‘I hear the cafeteria food there is
terrible! Like, no enchiladas at all.’
Annabeth held out her hand. ‘Come on, Seaweed Brain. Time for dinner.’
We walked back towards the dining pavilion together, just the three of us, like
old times.
A storm raged that night, but it parted around Camp Half-Blood as storms
usually did. Lightning flashed against the horizon, waves pounded the shore, but
not a drop fell in our valley. We were protected again thanks to the Fleece, sealed
inside our magical borders.
Still, my dreams were restless. I heard Kronos taunting me from the depths of
Tartarus: Polyphemus sits blindly in his cave, young hero, believing he has won a
great victory. Are you any less deluded? The titan’s cold laughter filled the
darkness.
Then my dream changed. I was following Tyson to the bottom of the sea, into
the court of Poseidon. It was a radiant hall filled with blue light, the floor
cobbled with pearls. And there, on a throne of coral, sat my father, dressed like a
simple fisherman in khaki shorts and a sun-bleached T-shirt. I looked up into his
tanned, weathered face, his deep green eyes, and he spoke two words: Brace
yourself.
I woke with a start.
There was a banging on the door. Grover flew inside without waiting for
permission. ‘Percy!’ he stammered. ‘Annabeth … on the hill … she…’
The look in his eyes told me something was terribly wrong. Annabeth had
been on guard duty that night, protecting the Fleece. If something had happened
–
I ripped off the covers, my blood like ice water in my veins. I threw on some
clothes while Grover tried to make a complete sentence, but he was too stunned,
too out of breath. ‘She’s lying there … just lying there…’
I ran outside and raced across the central yard, Grover right behind me. Dawn
was just breaking, but the whole camp seemed to be stirring. Word was
spreading. Something huge had happened. A few campers were already making
their way towards the hill, satyrs and nymphs and heroes in a weird mix of
armour and pyjamas.
I heard the clop of horse hooves, and Chiron galloped up behind us, looking
grim.
‘Is it true?’ he asked Grover.
Grover could only nod, his expression dazed.
I tried to ask what was going on, but Chiron grabbed me by the arm and
effortlessly lifted me onto his back. Together we thundered up Half-Blood Hill,
where a small crowd had started to gather.
I expected to see the Fleece missing from the pine tree, but it was still there,
glittering in the first light of dawn. The storm had broken and the sky was bloodred.
‘Curse the Titan Lord,’ Chiron said. ‘He’s tricked us again, given himself
another chance to control the prophecy.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The Fleece,’ he said. ‘The Fleece did its work too well.’
We galloped forward, everyone moving out of our way. There at the base of
the tree, a girl was lying unconscious. Another girl in Greek armour was
kneeling next to her.
Blood roared in my ears. I couldn’t think straight. Annabeth had been
attacked? But why was the Fleece still there?
The tree itself looked perfectly fine, whole and healthy, suffused with the
essence of the Golden Fleece.
‘It healed the tree,’ Chiron said, his voice ragged. ‘And poison was not the
only thing it purged.’
Then I realized Annabeth wasn’t the one lying on the ground. She was the one
in armour, kneeling next to the unconscious girl. When Annabeth saw us, she ran
to Chiron. ‘It … she … just suddenly there…’
Her eyes were streaming with tears, but I still didn’t understand. I was too
freaked out to make sense of it all. I leaped off Chiron’s back and ran towards
the unconscious girl. Chiron said, ‘Percy, wait!’
I knelt by her side. She had short black hair and freckles across her nose. She
was built like a long-distance runner, lithe and strong, and she wore clothes that
were somewhere between punk and Goth – a black T-shirt, black tattered jeans,
and a leather jacket with badges from a bunch of bands I’d never heard of.
She wasn’t a camper. I didn’t recognize her from any of the cabins. And yet I
had the strangest feeling I’d seen her before…
‘It’s true,’ Grover said, panting from his run up the hill. ‘I can’t believe…’
Nobody else came close to the girl.
I put my hand on her forehead. Her skin was cold, but my fingertips tingled as
if they were burning.
‘She needs nectar and ambrosia,’ I said. She was clearly a half-blood, whether
she was a camper or not. I could sense that just from one touch. I didn’t
understand why everyone was acting so scared.
I took her by the shoulders and lifted her into a sitting position, resting her
head on my shoulder.
‘Come on!’ I yelled to the others. ‘What’s wrong with you people? Let’s get
her to the Big House.’
No one moved, not even Chiron. They were all too stunned.
Then the girl took a shaky breath. She coughed and opened her eyes.
Her irises were startlingly blue – electric blue.
The girl stared at me in bewilderment, shivering and wild-eyed. ‘Who –’
‘I’m Percy,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘Strangest dream…’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Dying.’
‘No,’ I assured her. ‘You’re okay. What’s your name?’
That’s when I knew. Even before she said it.
The girl’s blue eyes stared into mine, and I understood what the Golden Fleece
quest had been about. The poisoning of the tree. Everything. Kronos had done it
to bring another chess piece into play – another chance to control the prophecy.
Even Chiron, Annabeth and Grover, who should’ve been celebrating this
moment, were too shocked, thinking about what it might mean for the future.
And I was holding someone who was destined to be my best friend, or possibly
my worst enemy.
‘I am Thalia,’ the girl said. ‘Daughter of Zeus.’
RICK RIORDAN
PUFFIN
Contents
1 • My Rescue Operation Goes Very Wrong
2 • The Vice-principal Gets a Missile Launcher
3 • Bianca di Angelo Makes a Choice
4 • Thalia Torches New England
5 • I Make an Underwater Phone Call
6 • An Old Dead Friend Comes to Visit
7 • Everybody Hates Me but the Horse
8 • I Make a Dangerous Promise
9 • I Learn How to Grow Zombies
10 • I Break a Few Rocket Ships
11 • Grover Gets a Lamborghini
12 • I Go Snowboarding with a Pig
13 • We Visit the Junkyard of the Gods
14 • I Have a Dam Problem
15 • I Wrestle Santa’s Evil Twin
16 • We Meet the Dragon of Eternal Bad Breath
17 • I Put on a Few Million Extra Kilograms
18 • A Friend Says Goodbye
19 • The Gods Vote How to Kill Us
20 • I Get a New Enemy for Christmas
To Topher Bradfield, a camper who made all the difference
1
My Rescue Operation Goes Very Wrong
The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few
deadly weapons, and took me to a new boarding school. We picked up my
friends Annabeth and Thalia on the way.
It was an eight-hour drive from New York to Bar Harbor, Maine. Sleet and
snow pounded the highway. Annabeth, Thalia and I hadn’t seen each other in
months, but between the blizzard and the thought of what we were about to do,
we were too nervous to talk much. Except for my mom. She talks more when
she’s nervous. By the time we finally got to Westover Hall, it was getting dark,
and she’d told Annabeth and Thalia every embarrassing baby story there was to
tell about me.
Thalia wiped the fog off the car window and peered outside. ‘Oh, yeah. This’ll
be fun.’
Westover Hall looked like an evil knight’s castle. It was all black stone, with
towers and slit windows and a big set of wooden double doors. It stood on a
snowy cliff overlooking this big frosty forest on one side and the grey churning
ocean on the other.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to wait?’ my mother asked.
‘No, thanks, Mom,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how long it will take. We’ll be okay.’
‘But how will you get back? I’m worried, Percy.’
I hoped I wasn’t blushing. It was bad enough I had to depend on my mom to
drive me to my battles.
‘It’s okay, Ms Jackson.’ Annabeth smiled reassuringly. Her blonde hair was
tucked into a ski cap and her grey eyes were the same colour as the ocean. ‘We’ll
keep him out of trouble.’
My mom seemed to relax a little. She thinks Annabeth is the most levelheaded demigod ever to hit eighth grade. She’s sure Annabeth often keeps me
from getting killed. She’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.
‘All right, dears,’ my mom said. ‘Do you have everything you need?’
‘Yes, Ms Jackson,’ Thalia said. ‘Thanks for the ride.’
‘Extra sweaters? You have my cell phone number?’
‘Mom –’
‘Your ambrosia and nectar, Percy? And a golden drachma in case you need to
contact camp?’
‘Mom, seriously! We’ll be fine. Come on, guys.’
She looked a little hurt, and I was sorry about that, but I was ready to be out of
that car. If my mom told one more story about how cute I looked in the bath
when I was three years old, I was going to burrow into the snow and freeze
myself to death.
Annabeth and Thalia followed me outside. The wind blew straight through my
coat like ice daggers.
Once my mother’s car was out of sight, Thalia said, ‘Your mom is so cool,
Percy.’
‘She’s pretty okay,’ I admitted. ‘What about you? You ever get in touch with
your mom?’
As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Thalia was great at giving evil looks,
what with the punk clothes she always wears – the ripped-up army jacket, black
leather trousers and chain jewellery, the black eyeliner and those intense blue
eyes. But the look she gave me now was a perfect evil ‘ten’. ‘If that was any of
your business, Percy –’
‘We’d better get inside,’ Annabeth interrupted. ‘Grover will be waiting.’
Thalia looked at the castle and shivered. ‘You’re right. I wonder what he
found here that made him send the distress call.’
I stared up at the dark towers of Westover Hall. ‘Nothing good,’ I guessed.
The oak doors groaned open, and the three of us stepped into the entry hall in a
swirl of snow.
All I could say was, ‘Whoa.’
The place was huge. The walls were lined with battle flags and weapon
displays: antique rifles, battleaxes and a bunch of other stuff. I mean, I knew
Westover was a military school and all, but the decorations seemed like overkill.
Literally.
My hand went to my pocket, where I kept my lethal ballpoint pen, Riptide. I
could already sense something wrong in this place. Something dangerous. Thalia
was rubbing her silver bracelet, her favourite magic item. I knew we were
thinking the same thing. A fight was coming.
Annabeth started to say, ‘I wonder where –’
The doors slammed shut behind us.
‘Oo-kay,’ I mumbled. ‘Guess we’ll stay a while.’
I could hear music echoing from the other end of the hall. It sounded like
dance music.
We stashed our overnight bags behind a pillar and started down the hall. We
hadn’t gone very far when I heard footsteps on the stone floor, and a man and
woman marched out of the shadows to intercept us.
They both had short grey hair and black military-style uniforms with red trim.
The woman had a wispy moustache, and the guy was clean-shaven, which
seemed kind of backwards to me. They both walked stiffly, like they had
broomsticks taped to their spines.
‘Well?’ the woman demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Um…’ I realized I hadn’t planned for this. I’d been so focused on getting to
Grover and finding out what was wrong, I hadn’t considered that someone might
question three kids sneaking into the school at night. We hadn’t talked at all in
the car about how we would get inside. I said, ‘Ma’am, we’re just –’
‘Ha!’ the man snapped, which made me jump. ‘Visitors are not allowed at the
dance! You shall be eee-jected!’
He had an accent – French, maybe. He pronounced his J like in Jacques. He
was tall, with a hawkish face. His nostrils flared when he spoke, which made it
really hard not to stare up his nose, and his eyes were two different colours – one
brown, one blue – like an alley cat’s.
I figured he was about to toss us into the snow, but then Thalia stepped
forward and did something very weird.
She snapped her fingers. The sound was sharp and loud. Maybe it was just my
imagination, but I felt a gust of wind ripple out from her hand, across the room.
It washed over all of us, making the banners rustle on the walls.
‘Oh, but we’re not visitors, sir,’ Thalia said. ‘We go to school here. You
remember: I’m Thalia. And this is Annabeth and Percy. We’re in the eighth
grade.’
The male teacher narrowed his two-coloured eyes. I didn’t know what Thalia
was thinking. Now we’d probably get punished for lying and thrown into the
snow. But the man seemed to be hesitating.
He looked at his colleague. ‘Ms Gottschalk, do you know these students?’
Despite the danger we were in, I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing.
A teacher named Got Chalk? He had to be kidding.
The woman blinked, like someone had just woken her up from a trance. ‘I…
yes. I believe I do, sir.’ She frowned at us. ‘Annabeth. Thalia. Percy. What are
you doing away from the gymnasium?’
Before we could answer, I heard more footsteps, and Grover ran up,
breathless. ‘You made it! You –’
He stopped short when he saw the teachers. ‘Oh, Mrs Gottschalk. Dr Thorn! I,
uh –’
‘What is it, Mr Underwood?’ said the man. His tone made it clear that he
detested Grover. ‘What do you mean they made it? These students live here.’
Grover swallowed. ‘Yes, sir. Of course, Dr Thorn. I just meant I’m so glad
they made… the punch for the dance! The punch is great. And they made it!’
Dr Thorn glared at us. I decided one of his eyes had to be fake. The brown
one? The blue one? He looked like he wanted to pitch us off the castle’s highest
tower, but then Mrs Gottschalk said dreamily, ‘Yes, the punch is excellent. Now
run along, all of you. You are not to leave the gymnasium again!’
We didn’t wait to be told twice. We left with a lot of ‘Yes, ma’ams’ and ‘Yes,
sirs’ and a couple of salutes, just because it seemed like the thing to do.
Grover hustled us down the hall in the direction of the music.
I could feel the teachers’ eyes on my back, but I walked closely to Thalia and
asked in a low voice, ‘How did you do that finger-snap thing?’
‘You mean the Mist? Hasn’t Chiron shown you how to do that yet?’
An uncomfortable lump formed in my throat. Chiron was our head trainer at
camp, but he’d never shown me anything like that. Why had he shown Thalia
and not me?
Grover hurried us to a door that had gym written on the glass. Even with my
dyslexia, I could read that much.
‘That was close!’ Grover said. ‘Thank the gods you got here!’
Annabeth and Thalia both hugged Grover. I gave him a big high five.
It was good to see him after so many months. He’d got a little taller and had
sprouted a few more whiskers, but otherwise he looked like he always did when
he passed for human – a red cap on his curly brown hair to hide his goat horns,
baggy jeans and trainers with fake feet to hide his furry legs and hooves. He was
wearing a black T-shirt that took me a few seconds to read. It said WESTOVER
HALL: GRUNT, I wasn’t sure whether that was, like, Grover’s rank or maybe
just the school motto.
‘So what’s the emergency?’ I asked.
Grover took a deep breath. ‘I found two.’
‘Two half-bloods?’ Thalia asked, amazed. ‘Here?’
Grover nodded.
Finding one half-blood was rare enough. This year, Chiron had put the satyrs
on emergency overtime and sent them all over the country, scouring schools
from fourth grade through high school for possible recruits. These were
desperate times. We were losing campers. We needed all the new fighters we
could find. The problem was, there just weren’t that many demigods out there.
‘A brother and a sister,’ he said. ‘They’re ten and twelve. I don’t know their
parentage, but they’re strong. We’re running out of time, though. I need help.’
‘Monsters?’
‘One.’ Grover looked nervous. ‘He suspects. I don’t think he’s positive yet,
but this is the last day of term. I’m sure he won’t let them leave campus without
finding out. It may be our last chance! Every time I try to get close to them, he’s
always there, blocking me. I don’t know what to do!’
Grover looked at Thalia desperately. I tried not to feel upset by that. Grover
used to look to me for answers, but Thalia had seniority. Not just because her
dad was Zeus. Thalia had more experience than any of us with fending off
monsters in the real world.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘These half-bloods are at the dance?’
Grover nodded.
‘Then let’s dance,’ Thalia said. ‘Who’s the monster?’
‘Oh,’ Grover said, and looked around nervously. ‘You just met him. The viceprincipal, Dr Thorn.’
Weird thing about military schools: the kids go absolutely nuts when there’s a
special event and they get to be out of uniform. I guess it’s because everything’s
so strict the rest of the time, they feel like they’ve got to overcompensate or
something.
There were black and red balloons all over the gym floor, and guys were
kicking them in each other’s faces, or trying to strangle each other with the
crêpe-paper streamers taped to the walls. Girls moved around in football
huddles, the way they always do, wearing lots of makeup and spaghetti-strap
tops and brightly coloured trousers and shoes that looked like torture devices.
Every once in a while they’d surround some poor guy like a pack of piranhas,
shrieking and giggling, and when they finally moved on, the guy would have
ribbons in his hair and a bunch of lipstick graffiti all over his face. Some of the
older guys looked more like me – uncomfortable, hanging out at the edges of the
gym and trying to hide, like any minute they might have to fight for their lives.
Of course, in my case, it was true…
‘There they are.’ Grover nodded towards a couple of younger kids arguing in
the bleachers. ‘Bianca and Nico di Angelo.’
The girl wore a floppy green cap, like she was trying to hide her face. The boy
was obviously her little brother. They both had dark silky hair and olive skin,
and they used their hands a lot as they talked. The boy was shuffling some kind
of trading cards. His sister seemed to be scolding him about something. She kept
looking around like she sensed something was wrong.
Annabeth said, ‘Do they… I mean, have you told them?’
Grover shook his head. ‘You know how it is. That could put them in more
danger. Once they realize who they are, their scent becomes stronger.’
He looked at me, and I nodded. I’d never really understood what half-bloods
‘smell’ like to monsters and satyrs, but I knew that your scent could get you
killed. And the more powerful a demigod you became, the more you smelled
like a monster’s lunch.
‘So let’s grab them and get out of here,’ I said.
I started forward, but Thalia put her hand on my shoulder. The vice-principal,
Dr Thorn, had slipped out of a doorway near the bleachers and was standing near
the di Angelo siblings. He nodded coldly in our direction. His blue eye seemed
to glow.
Judging from his expression, I guessed Thorn hadn’t been fooled by Thalia’s
trick with the Mist after all. He suspected who we were. He was just waiting to
see why we were here.
‘Don’t look at the kids,’ Thalia ordered. ‘We have to wait for a chance to get
them. We need to pretend we’re not interested in them. Throw him off the scent.’
‘How?’
‘We’re three powerful half-bloods. Our presence should confuse him. Mingle.
Act natural. Do some dancing. But keep an eye on those kids.’
‘Dancing?’ Annabeth asked.
Thalia nodded. She cocked her ear to the music and made a face. ‘Ugh. Who
chose the Jesse McCartney?’
Grover looked hurt. ‘I did.’
‘Oh my gods, Grover. That is so lame. Can’t you play, like, Green Day or
something?’
‘Green who?’
‘Never mind. Let’s dance.’
‘But I can’t dance!’
‘You can if I’m leading,’ Thalia said. ‘Come on, goat boy.’
Grover yelped as Thalia grabbed his hand and led him onto the dance floor.
Annabeth smiled.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘Nothing. It’s just cool to have Thalia back.’
Annabeth had grown taller than me since last summer, which I found kind of
disturbing. She used to wear no jewellery except for her Camp Half-Blood bead
necklace, but now she wore little silver earrings shaped like owls – the symbol
of her mother, Athena. She pulled off her ski cap, and her long blonde hair
tumbled down her shoulders. It made her look older, for some reason.
‘So…’ I tried to think of something to say. Act natural, Thalia had told us.
When you’re a half-blood on a dangerous mission, what the heck is natural?
‘Um, design any good buildings lately?’
Annabeth’s eyes lit up, the way they always did when she talked about
architecture. ‘Oh my gods, Percy. At my new school, I get to take 3-D design,
and there’s this cool computer program…’
She went on to explain how she’d designed this huge monument that she
wanted to build at Ground Zero in Manhattan. She talked about structural
supports and facades and stuff, and I tried to listen. I knew she wanted to be a
super architect when she grew up – she loves maths and historical buildings and
all that – but I hardly understood a word she was saying.
The truth was I was kind of disappointed to hear that she liked her new school
so much. It was the first time she’d gone to school in New York. I’d been hoping
to see her more often. It was a boarding school in Brooklyn, which she and
Thalia were both attending, close enough to Camp Half-Blood that Chiron could
help if they got into any trouble. Because it was an all-girls school, and I was
going to MS-54 in Manhattan, I hardly ever saw them.
‘Yeah, uh, cool,’ I said. ‘So you’re staying there the rest of the year, huh?’
Her face got dark. ‘Well, maybe, if I don’t –’
‘Hey!’ Thalia called to us. She was slow dancing with Grover, who was
tripping all over himself, kicking Thalia in the shins, and looking like he wanted
to die. At least his feet were fake. Unlike me, he had an excuse for being clumsy.
‘Dance, you guys!’ Thalia ordered. ‘You look stupid just standing there.’
I looked nervously at Annabeth, then at the groups of girls who were roaming
the gym.
‘Well?’ Annabeth said.
‘Um, who should I ask?’
She punched me in the gut. ‘Me, Seaweed Brain.’
‘Oh. Oh, right.’
So we went onto the dance floor, and I looked over to see how Thalia and
Grover were doing things. I put one hand on Annabeth’s hip, and she clasped my
other hand like she was about to judo throw me.
‘I’m not going to bite,’ she told me. ‘Honestly, Percy. Don’t you guys have
dances at your school?’
I didn’t answer. The truth was we did. But I’d never, like, actually danced at
one. I was usually one of the guys playing basketball in the corner.
We shuffled around for a few minutes. I tried to concentrate on little things,
like the crêpe-paper streamers and the punch bowl – anything but the fact that
Annabeth was taller than me, and my hands were sweaty and probably gross,
and I kept stepping on her toes.
‘What were you saying earlier?’ I asked. ‘Are you having trouble at school or
something?’
She pursed her lips. ‘It’s not that. It’s my dad.’
‘Uh-oh.’ I knew Annabeth had a rocky relationship with her father. ‘I thought
it was getting better with you two. Is it your stepmom again?’
Annabeth sighed. ‘He decided to move. Just when I was getting settled in
New York, he took this stupid new job researching for a World War I book. In
San Francisco.’
She said this the same way she might say Fields of Punishment or Hades’s
gym shorts.
‘So he wants you to move out there with him?’ I asked.
‘To the other side of the country,’ she said miserably. ‘And half-bloods can’t
live in San Francisco. He should know that.’
‘What? Why not?’
Annabeth rolled her eyes. Maybe she thought I was kidding. ‘You know. It’s
right there.’
‘Oh,’ I said. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn’t want to
sound stupid. ‘So… you’ll go back to living at camp or what?’
‘It’s more serious than that, Percy. I… I probably should tell you something.’
Suddenly she froze. ‘They’re gone.’
‘What?’
I followed her gaze. The bleachers. The two half-blood kids, Bianca and Nico,
were no longer there. The door next to the bleachers was wide open. Dr Thorn
was nowhere in sight.
‘We have to get Thalia and Grover!’ Annabeth looked around frantically. ‘Oh,
where’d they dance off to? Come on!’
She ran through the crowd. I was about to follow when a mob of girls got in
my way. I manoeuvred round them to avoid getting the ribbon-and-lipstick
treatment, and by the time I was free Annabeth had disappeared. I turned,
looking for her or Thalia and Grover. Instead, I saw something that chilled my
blood.
About fifteen metres away, lying on the gym floor, was a floppy green cap just
like the one Bianca di Angelo had been wearing. Near it were a few scattered
trading cards. Then I caught a glimpse of Dr Thorn. He was hurrying out a door
at the opposite end of the gym, steering the di Angelo kids by the scruffs of their
necks, like kittens.
I still couldn’t see Annabeth, but I knew she’d be heading the other way,
looking for Thalia and Grover.
I almost ran after her, and then I thought, Wait.
I remembered what Thalia had said to me in the entry hall, looking at me all
puzzled when I asked about the finger-snap trick: Hasn’t Chiron shown you how
to do that yet? I thought about the way Grover had turned to her, expecting her
to save the day.
Not that I resented Thalia. She was cool. It wasn’t her fault her dad was Zeus
and she got all the attention… Still, I didn’t need to run after her to solve every
problem. Besides, there wasn’t time. The di Angelos were in danger. They might
be long gone by the time I found my friends. I knew monsters. I could handle
this myself.
I took Riptide out of my pocket and ran after Dr Thorn.
The door led into a dark hallway. I heard sounds of scuffling up ahead, then a
painful grunt. I uncapped Riptide.
The pen grew in my hands until I held a bronze Greek sword about a metre
long with a leather-bound grip. The blade glowed faintly, casting a golden light
on the rows of lockers.
I jogged down the corridor, but when I got to the other end, no one was there.
I opened a door and found myself back in the main entry hall. I had gone full
circle. I didn’t see Dr Thorn anywhere, but there on the opposite side of the room
were the di Angelo kids. They stood frozen in horror, staring right at me.
I advanced slowly, lowering the tip of my sword. ‘It’s okay. I’m not going to
hurt you.’
They didn’t answer. Their eyes were full of fear. What was wrong with them?
Where was Dr Thorn? Maybe he’d sensed the presence of Riptide and retreated.
Monsters hated celestial bronze weapons.
‘My name’s Percy,’ I said, trying to keep my voice level. ‘I’m going to take
you out of here, get you somewhere safe.’
Bianca’s eyes widened. Her fists clenched. Only too late did I realize what her
look meant. She wasn’t afraid of me. She was trying to warn me.
I whirled round and something went WHIIISH! Pain exploded in my shoulder.
A force like a huge hand yanked me backwards and slammed me to the wall.
I slashed with my sword but there was nothing to hit.
A cold laugh echoed through the hall.
‘Yes, Perseus Jackson,’ Dr Thorn said. His accent mangled the J in my last
name. ‘I know who you are.’
I tried to free my shoulder. My coat and shirt were pinned to the wall by some
kind of spike – a black daggerlike projectile about half a metre long. It had
grazed the skin of my shoulder as it passed through my clothes, and the cut
burned. I’d felt something like this before. Poison.
I forced myself to concentrate. I would not pass out.
A dark silhouette now moved towards us. Dr Thorn stepped into the dim light.
He still looked human, but his face was ghoulish. He had perfect white teeth and
his brown/blue eyes reflected the light of my sword.
‘Thank you for coming out of the gym,’ he said. ‘I hate middle-school
dances.’
I tried to swing my sword again, but he was just out of reach.
WHIIIISH! A second projectile shot from somewhere behind Dr Thorn. He
didn’t appear to move. It was as if someone invisible were standing behind him,
throwing knives.
Next to me, Bianca yelped. The second thorn impaled itself in the stone wall,
a millimetre from her face.
‘All three of you will come with me,’ Dr Thorn said. ‘Quietly. Obediently. If
you make a single noise, if you call out for help or try to fight, I will show you
just how accurately I can throw.’
2
The Vice-Principal Gets A Missile Launcher
I didn’t know what kind of monster Dr Thorn was, but he was fast.
Maybe I could defend myself if I could get my shield activated. All that it
would take was a touch of my wristwatch. But defending the di Angelo kids was
another matter. I needed help, and there was only one way I could think to get it.
I closed my eyes.
‘What are you doing, Jackson?’ hissed Dr Thorn. ‘Keep moving!’
I opened my eyes and kept shuffling forward. ‘It’s my shoulder,’ I lied, trying
to sound miserable, which wasn’t hard. ‘It burns.’
‘Bah! My poison causes pain. It will not kill you. Walk!’
Thorn herded us outside, and I tried to concentrate. I pictured Grover’s face. I
focused on my feelings of fear and danger. Last summer, Grover had created an
empathy link between us. He’d sent me visions in my dreams to let me know
when he was in trouble. As far as I knew, we were still linked, but I’d never tried
to contact Grover before. I didn’t even know if it would work while Grover was
awake.
Hey, Grover! I thought. Thorn’s kidnapping us! He’s a poisonous spikethrowing maniac! Help!
Thorn marched us into the woods. We took a snowy path dimly lit by oldfashioned lamplights. My shoulder ached. The wind blowing through my ripped
clothes was so cold that I felt like a Percysicle.
‘There is a clearing ahead,’ Thorn said. ‘We will summon your ride.’
‘What ride?’ Bianca demanded. ‘Where are you taking us?’
‘Silence, you insufferable girl!’
‘Don’t talk to my sister that way!’ Nico said. His voice quavered, but I was
impressed that he had the guts to say anything at all.
Dr Thorn made a growling sound that definitely wasn’t human. It made the
hairs on the back of my neck stand up, but I forced myself to keep walking and
pretend I was being a good little captive. Meanwhile, I projected my thoughts
like crazy – anything to get Grover’s attention: Grover! Apples! Tin cans! Get
your furry goat behind out here and bring some heavily armed friends!
‘Halt,’ Thorn said.
The woods had opened up. We’d reached a cliff overlooking the sea. At least,
I sensed the sea was down there, about a hundred metres below. I could hear the
waves churning and I could smell the cold salty froth. But all I could see was
mist and darkness.
Dr Thorn pushed us towards the edge. I stumbled, and Bianca caught me.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured.
‘What is he?’ she whispered. ‘How do we fight him?’
‘I… I’m working on it.’
‘I’m scared,’ Nico mumbled. He was fiddling with something – a little metal
toy soldier of some kind.
‘Stop talking!’ Dr Thorn said. ‘Face me!’
We turned.
Thorn’s two-tone eyes glittered hungrily. He pulled something from under his
coat. At first I thought it was a switchblade, but it was only a phone. He pressed
the side button and said, ‘The package – it is ready to deliver.’
There was a garbled reply, and I realized Thorn was in walkie-talkie mode.
This seemed way too modern and creepy – a monster using a cell phone.
I glanced behind me, wondering how far the drop was.
Dr Thorn laughed. ‘By all means, Son of Poseidon. Jump! There is the sea.
Save yourself.’
‘What did he call you?’ Bianca muttered.
‘I’ll explain later,’ I said.
‘You do have a plan, right?’
Grover! I thought desperately. Come to me!
Maybe I could get both the di Angelos to jump with me into the ocean. If we
survived the fall, I could use the water to protect us. I’d done things like that
before. If my dad was in a good mood, and listening, he might help. Maybe.
‘I would kill you before you ever reached the water,’ Dr Thorn said, as if
reading my thoughts. ‘You do not realize who I am, do you?’
A flicker of movement behind him, and another missile whistled so close to
me that it nicked my ear. Something had sprung up behind Dr Thorn – like a
catapult, but more flexible… almost like a tail.
‘Unfortunately,’ Thorn said, ‘you are wanted alive, if possible. Otherwise you
would already be dead.’
‘Who wants us?’ Bianca demanded. ‘Because if you think you’ll get a ransom,
you’re wrong. We don’t have any family. Nico and I…’ Her voice broke a little.
‘We’ve got no one but each other.’
‘Aww,’ Dr Thorn said. ‘Do not worry, little brats. You will be meeting my
employer soon enough. Then you will have a brand-new family.’
‘Luke,’ I said. ‘You work for Luke.’
Dr Thorn’s mouth twisted with distaste when I said the name of my old enemy
– a former friend who’d tried to kill me several times. ‘You have no idea what is
happening, Perseus Jackson. I will let the General enlighten you. You are going
to do him a great service tonight. He is looking forward to meeting you.’
‘The General?’ I asked. Then I realized I’d said it with a French accent. ‘I
mean… who’s the General?’
Thorn looked towards the horizon. ‘Ah, here we are. Your transportation.’
I turned and saw a light in the distance, a searchlight over the sea. Then I
heard the chopping of helicopter blades getting louder and closer.
‘Where are you taking us?’ Nico said.
‘You should feel honoured, my boy. You will have the opportunity to join a
great army! Just like that silly game you play with cards and dolls.’
‘They’re not dolls! They’re figurines! And you can take your great army and
–’
‘Now, now,’ Dr Thorn warned. ‘You will change your mind about joining us,
my boy. And, if you do not, well… there are other uses for half-bloods. We have
many monstrous mouths to feed. The Great Stirring is underway.’
‘The Great what?’ I asked. Anything to keep him talking while I tried to figure
out a plan.
‘The stirring of monsters.’ Dr Thorn smiled evilly. ‘The worst of them, the
most powerful, are now waking. Monsters that have not been seen in thousands
of years. They will cause death and destruction the likes of which mortals have
never known. And soon we shall have the most important monster of all – the
one that shall bring about the downfall of Olympus!’
‘Okay,’ Bianca whispered to me. ‘He’s completely nuts.’ ‘We have to jump off
the cliff,’ I told her quietly. ‘Into the sea.’
‘Oh, super idea. You’re completely nuts, too.’ I never got the chance to argue
with her, because just then an invisible force slammed into me.
Looking back on it, Annabeth’s move was brilliant. Wearing her cap of
invisibility, she ploughed into the di Angelos and me, knocking us to the ground.
For a split second, Dr Thorn was taken by surprise, so his first volley of missiles
zipped harmlessly over our heads. This gave Thalia and Grover a chance to
advance from behind – Thalia wielding her magic shield, Aegis.
If you’ve never seen Thalia run into battle, you have never been truly
frightened. She uses a huge spear that expands from this collapsible Mace
canister she carries in her pocket, but that’s not the scary part. Her shield is
modelled on one her dad Zeus uses – also called Aegis – a gift from Athena. The
shield has the head of the gorgon Medusa moulded into the bronze, and even
though it won’t turn you to stone it’s so horrible most people will panic and run
at the sight of it.
Even Dr Thorn winced and growled when he saw it.
Thalia moved in with her spear. ‘For Zeus!’
I thought Dr Thorn was a goner. Thalia jabbed at his head, but he snarled and
swatted the spear aside. His hand changed into an orange paw with enormous
claws that sparked against Thalia’s shield as he slashed. If it hadn’t been for
Aegis, Thalia would’ve been sliced like a loaf of bread. As it was, she managed
to roll backwards and land on her feet.
The sound of the helicopter was getting louder behind me, but I didn’t dare
look.
Dr Thorn launched another volley of missiles at Thalia, and this time I could
see how he did it. He had a tail – a leathery, scorpionlike tail that bristled with
spikes at the tip. The missiles deflected off Aegis, but the force of their impact
knocked Thalia down.
Grover sprang forward. He put his reed pipes to his lips and began to play – a
frantic jig that sounded like something pirates would dance to. Grass broke
through the snow. Within seconds, rope-thick weeds were wrapping round Dr
Thorn’s legs, entangling him.
Dr Thorn roared and began to change. He grew larger until he was in his true
form – his face still human, but his body that of a huge lion. His leathery, spiky
tail whipped deadly thorns in all directions.
‘A manticore!’ Annabeth said, now visible. Her magical New York Yankees
cap had come off when she’d ploughed into us.
‘Who are you people?’ Bianca di Angelo demanded. ‘And what is that?’
‘A manticore?’ Nico gasped. ‘He’s got three thousand attack power and plus
five to saving throws!’
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I didn’t have time to worry about
it. The manticore clawed Grover’s magic weeds to shreds then turned towards us
with a snarl.
‘Get down!’ Annabeth pushed the di Angelos flat into the snow. At the last
second, I remembered my own shield. I hit my wristwatch, and metal plating
spiralled out into a thick bronze shield. Not a moment too soon. The thorns
impacted against it with such force they dented the metal. The beautiful shield, a
gift from my brother, was badly damaged. I wasn’t sure it would even stop a
second volley.
I heard a thwack and a yelp, and Grover landed next to me with a thud.
‘Yield!’ the monster roared.
‘Never!’ Thalia yelled from across the field. She charged the monster and, for
a second, I thought she would run him through. But then there was a thunderous
noise and a blaze of light from behind us. The helicopter appeared out of the
mist, hovering just beyond the cliffs. It was a sleek black military-style gunship,
with attachments on the sides that looked like laser-guided rockets. The
helicopter had to be manned by mortals, but what was it doing here? How could
mortals be working with a monster? The searchlights blinded Thalia, and the
manticore swatted her away with its tail. Her shield flew off into the snow. Her
spear flew in the other direction.
‘No!’ I ran out to help her. I parried away a spike just before it would’ve hit
her chest. I raised my shield over us, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough.
Dr Thorn laughed. ‘Now do you see how hopeless it is? Yield, little heroes.’
We were trapped between a monster and a fully armed helicopter. We had no
chance.
Then I heard a clear, piercing sound: the call of a hunting horn blowing in the
woods.
The manticore froze. For a moment, no one moved. There was only the swirl of
snow and wind and the chopping of the helicopter blades.
‘No,’ Dr Thorn said. ‘It cannot be –’
His sentence was cut short when something shot past me like a streak of
moonlight. A glowing silver arrow sprouted from Dr Thorn’s shoulder.
He staggered backwards, wailing in agony.
‘Curse you!’ Thorn cried. He unleashed his spikes, dozens of them at once,
into the woods where the arrow had come from, but just as fast, silvery arrows
shot back in reply. It almost looked like the arrows had intercepted the thorns in
mid-air and sliced them in two, but my eyes must’ve been playing tricks on me.
No one, not even Apollo’s kids at camp, could shoot with that much accuracy.
The manticore pulled the arrow out of his shoulder with a howl of pain. His
breathing was heavy. I tried to swipe at him with my sword, but he wasn’t as
injured as he looked. He dodged my attack and slammed his tail into my shield,
knocking me aside.
Then the archers came from the woods. They were girls, about a dozen of
them. The youngest was maybe ten. The oldest, about fourteen, like me. They
wore silvery ski parkas and jeans, and they were all armed with bows. They
advanced on the manticore with determined expressions.
‘The Hunters!’ Annabeth cried.
Next to me, Thalia muttered, ‘Oh, wonderful.’
I didn’t have a chance to ask what she meant.
One of the older archers stepped forward with her bow drawn. She was tall
and graceful with coppery coloured skin. Unlike the other girls, she had a silver
circlet braided into the top of her long dark hair, so she looked like some kind of
Persian princess. ‘Permission to kill, my lady?’
I couldn’t tell who she was talking to, because she kept her eyes on the
manticore.
The monster wailed. ‘This is not fair! Direct interference! It is against the
Ancient Laws.’
‘Not so,’ another girl said. This one was a little younger than me, maybe
twelve or thirteen. She had auburn hair gathered back in a ponytail and strange
eyes, silvery yellow like the moon. Her face was so beautiful it made me catch
my breath, but her expression was stern and dangerous. ‘The hunting of all wild
beasts is within my sphere. And you, foul creature, are a wild beast.’ She looked
at the older girl with the circlet. ‘Zoë, permission granted.’
The manticore growled. ‘If I cannot have these alive, I shall have them dead!’
He lunged at Thalia and me, knowing we were weak and dazed.
‘No!’ Annabeth yelled, and she charged at the monster.
‘Get back, half-blood!’ the girl with the circlet said. ‘Get out of the line of
fire!’
But Annabeth leaped onto the monster’s back and drove her knife into his
mane. The manticore howled, turning in circles with his tail flailing as Annabeth
hung on for dear life.
‘Fire!’ Zoë ordered.
‘No!’ I screamed.
But the Hunters let their arrows fly. The first caught the manticore in the neck.
Another hit his chest. The manticore staggered backwards, wailing, ‘This is not
the end, Huntress! You shall pay!’
And before anyone could react, the monster, with Annabeth still on his back,
leaped over the cliff and tumbled into the darkness.
‘Annabeth!’ I yelled.
I started to run after her, but our enemies weren’t done with us. There was a
snap-snap-snap from the helicopter – the sound of gunfire.
Most of the Hunters scattered as tiny holes appeared in the snow at their feet,
but the girl with auburn hair just looked up calmly at the helicopter.
‘Mortals,’ she announced, ‘are not allowed to witness my hunt.’
She thrust out her hand, and the helicopter exploded into dust – no, not dust.
The black metal dissolved into a flock of birds – ravens, which scattered into the
night.
The Hunters advanced on us.
The one called Zoë stopped short when she saw Thalia. ‘You,’ she said with
distaste.
‘Zoë Nightshade.’ Thalia’s voice trembled with anger. ‘Perfect timing, as
usual.’
Zoë scanned the rest of us. ‘Four half-bloods and a satyr, my lady.’
‘Yes,’ the younger girl said. ‘Some of Chiron’s campers, I see.’
‘Annabeth!’ I yelled. ‘You have to let us save her!’
The auburn-haired girl turned towards me. ‘I’m sorry, Percy Jackson, but your
friend is beyond help.’
I tried to struggle to my feet, but a couple of the girls held me down.
‘You are in no condition to be hurling yourself off cliffs,’ the auburn-haired
girl said.
‘Let me go!’ I demanded. ‘Who do you think you are?’
Zoë stepped forward as if to slap me.
‘No,’ the other girl ordered. ‘I sense no disrespect, Zoë. He is simply
distraught. He does not understand.’
The young girl looked at me, her eyes colder and brighter than the winter
moon. ‘I am Artemis,’ she said. ‘Goddess of the Hunt.’
3
Bianca Di Angelo Makes A Choice
After seeing Dr Thorn turn into a monster and plummet off the edge of a cliff
with Annabeth, you’d think nothing else could shock me. But when this twelveyear-old girl told me she was the goddess Artemis, I said something really
intelligent like, ‘Um… okay.’
That was nothing compared to Grover. He gasped, then knelt hastily in the
snow and started yammering, ‘Thank you, Lady Artemis! You’re so… you’re
so… Wow!’
‘Get up, goat boy!’ Thalia snapped. ‘We have other things to worry about.
Annabeth is gone!’
‘Whoa,’ Bianca di Angelo said. ‘Hold up. Time out.’
Everybody looked at her. She pointed her finger at all of us in turn, like she
was trying to connect the dots. ‘Who… who are you people?’
Artemis’s expression softened. ‘It might be a better question, my dear girl, to
ask who are you? Who are your parents?’
Bianca glanced nervously at her brother, who was still staring in awe at
Artemis.
‘Our parents are dead,’ Bianca said. ‘We’re orphans. There’s a bank trust that
pays for our school, but…’
She faltered. I guess she could tell from our faces that we didn’t believe her.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘I’m telling the truth.’
‘You are a half-blood,’ Zoë Nightshade said. Her accent was hard to place. It
seemed old-fashioned, like she was reading from a really old book. ‘One of thy
parents was mortal. The other was an Olympian.’
‘An Olympian… athlete?’
‘No,’ Zoë said. ‘One of the gods.’
‘Cool!’ said Nico.
‘No!’ Bianca’s voice quavered. ‘This is not cool!’
Nico danced around like he needed to use the restroom. ‘Does Zeus really
have lightning bolts that do six hundred damage? Does he get extra movement
points for –’
‘Nico, shut up!’ Bianca put her hands to her face. ‘This is not your stupid
Mythomagic game, okay? There are no gods!’
As anxious as I felt about Annabeth – all I wanted to do was search for her – I
couldn’t help feeling sorry for the di Angelos. I remembered what it was like for
me when I first learned I was a demigod.
Thalia must’ve been feeling something similar, because the anger in her eyes
subsided a little bit. ‘Bianca, I know it’s hard to believe. But the gods are still
around. Trust me. They’re immortal. And whenever they have kids with regular
humans, kids like us, well… Our lives are dangerous.’
‘Dangerous,’ Bianca said, ‘like the girl who fell.’
Thalia turned away. Even Artemis looked pained.
‘Do not despair for Annabeth,’ the goddess said. ‘She was a brave maiden. If
she can be found, I shall find her.’
‘Then why won’t you let us go and look for her?’ I asked.
‘She is gone. Can’t you sense it, Son of Poseidon? Some magic is at work. I
do not know exactly how or why, but your friend has vanished.’
I still wanted to jump off the cliff and search for her, but I had a feeling that
Artemis was right. Annabeth was gone. If she’d been down there in the sea, I
thought, I’d be able to feel her presence.
‘Oo!’ Nico raised his hand. ‘What about Dr Thorn? That was awesome how
you shot him with arrows! Is he dead?’
‘He was a manticore,’ Artemis said. ‘Hopefully, he is destroyed for now, but
monsters never truly die. They reform over and over again, and they must be
hunted whenever they reappear.’
‘Or they’ll hunt us,’ Thalia said.
Bianca di Angelo shivered. ‘That explains… Nico, you remember last
summer, those guys who tried to attack us in the alley in D.C.?’
‘And that bus driver,’ Nico said. ‘The one with the ram’s horns. I told you that
was real.’
‘That’s why Grover has been watching you,’ I said. ‘To keep you safe, if you
turned out to be half-bloods.’
‘Grover?’ Bianca stared at him. ‘You’re a demigod?’
‘Well, a satyr, actually.’ He kicked off his shoes and displayed his goat
hooves. I thought Bianca was going to faint right there.
‘Grover, put your shoes back on,’ Thalia said. ‘You’re freaking her out.’
‘Hey, my hooves are clean!’
‘Bianca,’ I said, ‘we came here to help you. You and Nico need training to
survive. Dr Thorn won’t be the last monster you meet. You need to come to
camp.’
‘Camp?’ she asked.
‘Camp Half-Blood,’ I said. ‘It’s where half-bloods learn to survive and stuff.
You can join us, stay there year round if you like.’
‘Sweet, let’s go!’ said Nico.
‘Wait.’ Bianca shook her head. ‘I don’t –’
‘There is another option,’ Zoë said.
‘No, there isn’t!’ Thalia said.
Thalia and Zoë glared at each other. I didn’t know what they were talking
about, but I could tell there was bad history between them. For some reason,
they seriously hated each other.
‘We’ve burdened these children enough,’ Artemis announced. ‘Zoë, we will
rest here for a few hours. Raise the tents. Treat the wounded. Retrieve our
guests’belongings from the school.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘And, Bianca, come with me. I would like to speak with you.’
‘What about me?’ Nico asked.
Artemis considered the boy. ‘Perhaps you can show Grover how to play that
card game you enjoy. I’m sure Grover would be happy to entertain you for a
while… as a favour to me?’
Grover just about tripped over himself getting up. ‘You bet! Come on, Nico!’
Nico and Grover walked off towards the woods, talking about hit points and
armour ratings and a bunch of other geeky stuff. Artemis led a confused-looking
Bianca along the cliff. The Hunters began unpacking their backpacks and
making camp.
Zoë gave Thalia one more evil look, then left to oversee things.
As soon as she was gone, Thalia stamped her foot in frustration. ‘The nerve of
those Hunters! They think they’re so… Argh!’
‘I’m with you,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust –’
‘Oh, you’re with me?’ Thalia turned on me furiously. ‘What were you
thinking back there in the gym, Percy? You’d take on Dr Thorn all by yourself?
You knew he was a monster!’
‘I –’
‘If we’d stuck together, we could’ve taken him without the Hunters getting
involved. Annabeth might still be here. Did you think of that?’
My jaw clenched. I thought of some harsh things to say, and I might’ve said
them, too, but then I looked down and saw something navy blue lying in the
snow at my feet. Annabeth’s New York Yankees baseball cap.
Thalia didn’t say another word. She wiped a tear from her cheek, turned and
marched off, leaving me alone with a trampled cap in the snow.
The Hunters set up their campsite in a matter of minutes. Seven large tents, all of
silver silk, curved in a crescent round one side of a bonfire. One of the girls blew
a silver dog whistle, and a dozen white wolves appeared out of the woods. They
began circling the camp like guard dogs. The Hunters walked among them and
fed them treats, completely unafraid, but I decided I would stick close to the
tents. Falcons watched us from the trees, their eyes flashing in the firelight, and I
got the feeling they were on guard duty, too. Even the weather seemed to bend to
the goddess’s will. The air was still cold, but the wind died down and the snow
stopped falling, so it was almost pleasant sitting by the fire.
Almost… Except for the pain in my shoulder and the guilt weighing me down.
I couldn’t believe Annabeth was gone. And, as angry as I was at Thalia, I had a
sinking feeling that she was right. It was my fault.
What had Annabeth wanted to tell me in the gym? Something serious, she’d
said. Now I might never find out. I thought about how we’d danced together for
half a song, and my heart felt even heavier.
I watched Thalia pacing in the snow at the edge of camp, walking among the
wolves without fear. She stopped and looked back at Westover Hall, which was
now completely dark, looming on the hillside beyond the woods. I wondered
what she was thinking.
Seven years ago, Thalia had been turned into a pine tree by her father, to
prevent her from dying. She’d stood her ground against an army of monsters on
top of Half-Blood Hill in order to give her friends Luke and Annabeth time to
escape. She’d only been back as a human for a few months now, and once in a
while she would stand so motionless you’d think she was still a tree.
Finally, one of the Hunters brought me my backpack. Grover and Nico
returned from their walk, and Grover helped me fix up my wounded arm.
‘It’s green!’ Nico said with delight.
‘Hold still,’ Grover told me. ‘Here, eat some ambrosia while I clean that out.’
I winced as he dressed the wound, but the ambrosia square helped. It tasted
like homemade brownie, dissolving in my mouth and sending a warm feeling
through my whole body. Between that and the magic salve Grover used, my
shoulder felt better within a couple of minutes.
Nico rummaged through his own bag, which the Hunters had apparently
packed for him, though how they’d snuck into Westover Hall unseen, I didn’t
know. Nico laid out a bunch of figurines in the snow – little battle replicas of
Greek gods and heroes. I recognized Zeus with a lightning bolt, Ares with a
spear, Apollo with his sun chariot.
‘Big collection,’ I said.
Nico grinned. ‘I’ve got almost all of them, plus their holographic cards! Well,
except for a few really rare ones.’
‘You’ve been playing this game a long time?’
‘Just this year. Before that…’ He knitted his eyebrows.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘I forgot. That’s weird.’
He looked unsettled, but it didn’t last long. ‘Hey, can I see that sword you
were using?’
I showed him Riptide, and explained how it turned from a pen into a sword
just by uncapping it.
‘Cool! Does it ever run out of ink?’
‘Um, well, I don’t actually write with it.’
‘Are you really the son of Poseidon?’
‘Well, yeah.’
‘Can you surf really well, then?’
I looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh.
‘Jeez, Nico,’ I said. ‘I’ve never really tried.’
He went on asking questions. Did I fight a lot with Thalia, since she was a
daughter of Zeus? (I didn’t answer that one.) If Annabeth’s mother was Athena,
the goddess of wisdom, then why didn’t Annabeth know better than to fall off a
cliff? (I tried not to strangle Nico for asking that one.) Was Annabeth my
girlfriend? (At this point, I was ready to stick the kid in a meat-flavoured sack
and throw him to the wolves.)
I figured any second he was going to ask me how many hit points I had, and
I’d lose my cool completely, but then Zoë Nightshade came up to us.
‘Percy Jackson.’
She had dark brown eyes and a slightly upturned nose. With her silver circlet
and her proud expression, she looked so much like royalty that I had to resist the
urge to sit up straight and say ‘Yes, ma’am.’ She studied me distastefully, like I
was a bag of dirty laundry she’d been sent to fetch.
‘Come with me,’ she said. ‘Lady Artemis wishes to speak with thee.’
Zoë led me to the last tent, which looked no different from the others, and waved
me inside. Bianca di Angelo was seated next to the auburn-haired girl, who I still
had trouble thinking of as Artemis.
The inside of the tent was warm and comfortable. Silk rugs and pillows
covered the floor. In the centre, a golden brazier of fire seemed to burn without
fuel or smoke. Behind the goddess, on a polished oak display stand, was her
huge silver bow, carved to resemble gazelle horns. The walls were hung with
animal pelts – black bear, tiger and several others I didn’t recognize. I figured an
animal-rights activist would’ve had a heart attack looking at all those rare skins,
but maybe, since Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, she could replenish
whatever she shot. I thought she had another animal pelt lying next to her, and
then I realized it was alive – a deer with glittering fur and silver horns, its head
resting contentedly in Artemis’s lap.
‘Join us, Percy Jackson,’ the goddess said.
I sat across from her on the tent floor. The goddess studied me, which made
me uncomfortable. She had such old eyes for a young girl.
‘Are you surprised by my age?’ she asked.
‘Uh… a little.’
‘I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want,
but this is what I prefer. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young
maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.’
‘Go astray?’ I asked.
‘Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure.
Forget themselves.’
‘Oh.’
Zoë sat down to Artemis’s right. She glared at me as if all the stuff Artemis
had just said was my fault, like I’d invented the idea of being a guy.
‘You must forgive my Hunters if they do not welcome you,’ Artemis said. ‘It
is very rare that we would have boys in this camp. Boys are usually forbidden to
have any contact with the Hunters. The last one to see this camp…’ She looked
at Zoë. ‘Which one was it?’
‘That boy in Colorado,’ Zoë said. ‘You turned him into a jackalope.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Artemis nodded, satisfied. ‘I enjoy making jackalopes. At any rate,
Percy, I’ve asked you here so that you might tell me more of the manticore.
Bianca has reported some of the… mmm, disturbing things the monster said. But
she may not have understood them. I’d like to hear them from you.’
And so I told her.
When I was done, Artemis put her hand thoughtfully on her silver bow. ‘I
feared this was the answer.’
Zoë sat forward. ‘The scent, my lady?’
‘Yes.’
‘What scent?’ I asked.
‘Things are stirring that I have not hunted in millennia,’ Artemis murmured.
‘Prey so old I have nearly forgotten.’
She stared at me intently. ‘We came here tonight sensing the manticore, but he
was not the one I seek. Tell me again, exactly what Dr Thorn said.’
‘Um, “I hate middle school dances.”’
‘No, no. After that.’
‘He said somebody called the General was going to explain things to me.’
Zoë’s face paled. She turned to Artemis and started to say something, but
Artemis raised her hand.
‘Go on, Percy,’ the goddess said.
‘Well, then Thorn was talking about the Great Stir Pot –’
‘Stirring,’ Bianca corrected.
‘Yeah. And he said, “Soon we shall have the most important monster of all –
the one that shall bring about the downfall of Olympus.”’
The goddess was so still she could’ve been a statue.
‘Maybe he was lying,’ I said.
Artemis shook her head. ‘No. He was not. I’ve been too slow to see the signs.
I must hunt this monster.’
Zoë looked like she was trying very hard not to be afraid, but she nodded. ‘We
will leave right away, my lady.’
‘No, Zoë. I must do this alone.’
‘But, Artemis –’
‘This task is too dangerous even for the Hunters. You know where I must start
my search. You cannot go there with me.’
‘As… as you wish, my lady.’
‘I will find this creature,’ Artemis vowed. ‘And I shall bring it back to
Olympus by winter solstice. It will be all the proof I need to convince the
Council of the Gods of how much danger we are in.’
‘You know what the monster is?’ I asked.
Artemis gripped her bow. ‘Let us pray I am wrong.’
‘Can goddesses pray?’ I asked, because I’d never really thought about that.
A flicker of a smile played across Artemis’s lips. ‘Before I go, Percy Jackson,
I have a small task for you.’
‘Does it involve getting turned into a jackalope?’
‘Sadly, no. I want you to escort the Hunters back to Camp Half-Blood. They
can stay there in safety until I return.’
‘What?’ Zoë blurted out. ‘But, Artemis, we hate that place. The last time we
stayed there –’
‘Yes, I know,’ Artemis said. ‘But I’m sure Dionysus will not hold a grudge
just because of a little, ah, misunderstanding. It’s your right to use Cabin Eight
whenever you are in need. Besides, I hear they rebuilt the cabins you burned
down.’
Zoë muttered something about foolish campers.
‘And now there is one last decision to make.’ Artemis turned to Bianca. ‘Have
you made up your mind, my girl?’
Bianca hesitated. ‘I’m still thinking about it.’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘Thinking about what?’
‘They… they’ve invited me to join the Hunt.’
‘What? But you can’t! You have to come to Camp Half-Blood so Chiron can
train you. It’s the only way you can learn to survive.’
‘It is not the only way for a girl,’ Zoë said.
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. ‘Bianca, camp is cool! It’s got a pegasus
stable and a sword-fighting arena and… I mean, what do you get by joining the
Hunters?’
‘To begin with,’ Zoë said, ‘immortality.’
I stared at her, then at Artemis. ‘She’s kidding, right?’
‘Zoë rarely kids about anything,’ Artemis said. ‘My Hunters follow me on my
adventures. They are my maidservants, my companions, my sisters-in-arms.
Once they swear loyalty to me, they are indeed immortal… unless they fall in
battle, which is unlikely. Or break their oath.’
‘What oath?’ I said.
‘To forswear romantic love forever,’ Artemis said. ‘To never grow up, never
get married. To be a maiden eternally.’
‘Like you?’
The goddess nodded.
I tried to imagine what she was saying. Being immortal. Hanging out with
only middle-school girls forever. I couldn’t get my mind round it. ‘So you just
go around the country recruiting half-bloods –’
‘Not just half-bloods,’ Zoë interrupted. ‘Lady Artemis does not discriminate
by birth. All who honour the goddess may join. Half-bloods, nymphs, mortals –’
‘Which are you, then?’
Anger flashed in Zoë’s eyes. ‘That is not thy concern, boy. The point is Bianca
may join if she wishes. It is her choice.’
‘Bianca, this is crazy,’ I said. ‘What about your brother? Nico can’t be a
Hunter.’
‘Certainly not,’ Artemis agreed. ‘He will go to camp. Unfortunately, that’s the
best boys can do.’
‘Hey!’ I protested.
‘You can see him from time to time,’ Artemis assured Bianca. ‘But you will be
free of responsibility. He will have the camp counsellors to take care of him.
And you will have a new family. Us.’
‘A new family,’ Bianca repeated dreamily. ‘Free of responsibility.’
‘Bianca, you can’t do this,’ I said. ‘It’s nuts.’
She looked at Zoë. ‘Is it worth it?’
Zoë nodded. ‘It is.’
‘What do I have to do?’
‘Say this,’ Zoë told her, ‘ “I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis.”’
‘I… I pledge myself to the goddess Artemis.’
‘ “I turn my back on the company of men, accept eternal maidenhood and join
the Hunt.” ’
Bianca repeated the lines. ‘That’s it?’
Zoë nodded. ‘If Lady Artemis accepts thy pledge, then it is binding.’
‘I accept it,’ Artemis said.
The flames in the brazier brightened, casting a silver glow over the room.
Bianca looked no different, but she took a deep breath and opened her eyes wide.
‘I feel… stronger.’
‘Welcome, sister,’ Zoë said.
‘Remember your pledge,’ Artemis said. ‘It is now your life.’
I couldn’t speak. I felt like a trespasser. And a complete failure. I couldn’t
believe I’d come all this way and suffered so much only to lose Bianca to some
eternal girls’ club.
‘Do not despair, Percy Jackson,’ Artemis said. ‘You will still get to show the
di Angelos your camp. And if Nico so chooses, he can stay there.’
‘Great,’ I said, trying not to sound surly. ‘How are we supposed to get there?’
Artemis closed her eyes. ‘Dawn is approaching. Zoë, break camp. You must
get to Long Island quickly and safely. I shall summon a ride from my brother.’
Zoë didn’t look very happy about this idea, but she nodded and told Bianca to
follow her. As she was leaving, Bianca paused in front of me. ‘I’m sorry, Percy.
But I want this. I really, really do.’
Then she was gone, and I was left alone with the twelve-year-old goddess.
‘So,’ I said glumly. ‘We’re going to get a ride from your brother, huh?’
Artemis’s silver eyes gleamed. ‘Yes, boy. You see, Bianca di Angelo is not the
only one with an annoying brother. It’s time for you to meet my irresponsible
twin, Apollo.’
4
Thalia Torches New England
Artemis assured us that dawn was coming, but you could’ve fooled me. It was
colder and darker and snowier than ever. Up on the hill, Westover Hall’s
windows were completely lightless. I wondered if the teachers had even noticed
the di Angelos and Dr Thorn were missing yet. I didn’t want to be around when
they did. With my luck, the only name Mrs Gottschalk would remember would
be ‘Percy Jackson’, and then I’d be the subject of a nationwide manhunt…
again.
The Hunters broke camp as quickly as they’d set it up. I stood shivering in the
snow (unlike the Hunters, who didn’t seem to feel at all uncomfortable), and
Artemis stared into the east like she was expecting something. Bianca sat off to
one side, talking with Nico. I could tell from his gloomy face that she was
explaining her decision to join the Hunt. I couldn’t help thinking how selfish it
was of her, abandoning her brother like that.
Thalia and Grover came up and huddled around me, anxious to hear what had
happened during my audience with the goddess.
When I told them, Grover turned pale. ‘The last time the Hunters visited
camp, it didn’t go well.’
‘How’d they even show up here?’ I wondered. ‘I mean, they just appeared out
of nowhere.’
‘And Bianca joined them,’ Thalia said, disgusted. ‘It’s all Zoë’s fault. That
stuck-up, no good –’
‘Who can blame her?’ Grover said. ‘Eternity with Artemis?’ He heaved a big
sigh.
Thalia rolled her eyes. ‘You satyrs. You’re all in love with Artemis. Don’t you
get that she’ll never love you back?’
‘But she’s so… into nature,’ Grover swooned.
‘You’re nuts,’ said Thalia.
‘Nuts and berries,’ Grover said dreamily. ‘Yeah.’
Finally the sky began to lighten. Artemis muttered, ‘About time. He’s so-o-o
lazy during the winter.’
‘You’re, um, waiting for sunrise?’ I asked.
‘For my brother. Yes.’
I didn’t want to be rude. I mean, I knew the legends about Apollo – or
sometimes Helios – driving a big sun chariot across the sky. But I also knew that
the sun was really a star about a zillion miles away. I’d got used to some of the
Greek myths being true, but still… I didn’t see how Apollo could drive the sun.
‘It’s not exactly as you think,’ Artemis said, like she was reading my mind.
‘Oh, okay.’ I started to relax. ‘So, it’s not like he’ll be pulling up in a –’
There was a sudden burst of light on the horizon. A blast of warmth.
‘Don’t look,’ Artemis advised. ‘Not until he parks.’
Parks?
I averted my eyes, and saw that the other kids were doing the same. The light
and warmth intensified until my winter coat felt like it was melting off me. Then
suddenly the light died.
I looked. And I couldn’t believe it. It was my car. Well, the car I wanted,
anyway. A red convertible Maserati Spyder. It was so awesome it glowed. Then I
realized it was glowing because the metal was hot. The snow had melted round
the Maserati in a perfect circle, which explained why I was now standing on
green grass and my shoes were wet.
The driver got out, smiling. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, and, for a
second, I had the uneasy feeling it was Luke, my old enemy. This guy had the
same sandy hair and outdoorsy good looks. But it wasn’t Luke. This guy was
taller, with no scar on his face like Luke’s. His smile was brighter and more
playful. (Luke didn’t do much more than scowl and sneer these days.) The
Maserati driver wore jeans and loafers and a sleeveless T-shirt.
‘Wow,’ Thalia muttered. ‘Apollo is hot.’
‘He’s the sun god,’ I said.
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Little sister!’ Apollo called. If his teeth were any whiter he could’ve blinded
us without the sun car. ‘What’s up? You never call. You never write. I was
getting worried!’
Artemis sighed. ‘I’m fine, Apollo. And I am not your little sister.’
‘Hey, I was born first.’
‘We’re twins! How many millennia do we have to argue –’
‘So what’s up?’ he interrupted. ‘Got the girls with you, I see. You all need
some tips on archery?’
Artemis gritted her teeth. ‘I need a favour. I have some hunting to do, alone. I
need you to take my companions to Camp Half-Blood.’
‘Sure, sis!’ Then he raised his hands in a stop everything gesture. ‘I feel a
haiku coming on.’
The Hunters all groaned. Apparently they’d met Apollo before.
He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.
‘Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool.’
He grinned at us, waiting for applause.
‘That last line was only four syllables,’ Artemis said.
Apollo frowned. ‘Was it?’
‘Yes. What about I am so big-headed?’
‘No, no, that’s six syllables. Hmm.’ He started muttering to himself.
Zoë Nightshade turned to us. ‘Lord Apollo has been going through this haiku
phase ever since he visited Japan.’ Tis not as bad as the time he visited Limerick.
If I’d had to hear one more poem that started with, There once was a goddess
from Sparta –’
‘I’ve got it!’ Apollo announced. ‘I am so awesome. That’s five syllables!’ He
bowed, looking very pleased with himself. ‘And now, sis. Transportation for the
Hunters, you say? Good timing. I was just about ready to roll.’
‘These demigods will also need a ride,’ Artemis said, pointing to us. ‘Some of
Chiron’s campers.’
‘No problem!’ Apollo checked us out. ‘Let’s see… Thalia, right? I’ve heard
all about you.’
Thalia blushed. ‘Hi, Lord Apollo.’
‘Zeus’s girl, yes? Makes you my half-sister. Used to be a tree, didn’t you?
Glad you’re back. I hate it when pretty girls turn into trees. Man, I remember one
time –’
‘Brother,’ Artemis said. ‘You should get going.’
‘Oh, right.’ Then he looked at me, and his eyes narrowed. ‘Percy Jackson?’
‘Yeah. I mean… yes, sir.’
It seemed weird calling a teenager ‘sir’, but I’d learned to be careful with
immortals. They tended to get offended easily. Then they blew stuff up.
Apollo studied me, but he didn’t say anything, which I found a little creepy.
‘Well!’ he said at last. ‘We’d better load up, huh? Ride only goes one way –
west. And if you miss it, you miss it.’
I looked at the Maserati, which would seat two people max. There were about
twenty of us.
‘Cool car,’ Nico said.
‘Thanks, kid,’ Apollo said.
‘But how will we all fit?’
‘Oh.’ Apollo seemed to notice the problem for the first time. ‘Well, yeah. I
hate to change out of sports-car mode, but I suppose…’
He took out his car keys and beeped the security alarm button. Chirp, chirp.
For a moment, the car glowed brightly again. When the glare died, the
Maserati had been replaced by one of those small buses just like we used for
school basketball games.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Everybody in.’
Zoë ordered the Hunters to start loading. She picked up her camping pack, and
Apollo said, ‘Here, sweetheart. Let me get that.’
Zoë recoiled. Her eyes flashed murderously.
‘Brother,’ Artemis chided. ‘You do not help my Hunters. You do not look at,
talk to, or flirt with my Hunters. And you do not call them sweetheart.’
Apollo spread his hands. ‘Sorry. I forgot. Hey, sis, where are you off to,
anyway?’
‘Hunting,’ Artemis said. ‘It’s none of your business.’
‘I’ll find out. I see all. Know all.’
Artemis snorted. ‘Just drop them off, Apollo. And no messing around!’
‘No, no! I never mess around.’
Artemis rolled her eyes, then looked at us. ‘I will see you by winter solstice.
Zoë, you are in charge of the Hunters. Do well. Do as I would do.’
Zoë straightened. ‘Yes, my lady.’
Artemis knelt and touched the ground as if looking for tracks. When she rose,
she looked troubled. ‘So much danger. The beast must be found.’
She sprinted towards the woods and melted into the snow and shadows.
Apollo turned and grinned, jangling the car keys on his finger. ‘So,’ he said.
‘Who wants to drive?’
The Hunters piled into the van. They all crammed into the back so they’d be as
far away as possible from Apollo and the rest of us highly infectious males.
Bianca sat with them, leaving her little brother to hang in the front with us,
which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn’t seem to mind.
‘This is so cool!’ Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver’s seat. ‘Is this
really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How
come sometimes it’s them and sometimes it’s you and Artemis?’
‘Downsizing,’ Apollo said. ‘The Romans started it. They couldn’t afford all
those temple sacrifices, so they laid off Helios and Selene and folded their duties
into our job descriptions. My sis got the moon. I got the sun. It was pretty
annoying at first, but at least I got this cool car.’
‘But how does it work?’ Nico asked. ‘I thought the sun was a big fiery ball of
gas!’
Apollo chuckled and ruffled Nico’s hair. ‘That rumour probably got started
because Artemis used to call me a big fiery ball of gas. Seriously, kid, it depends
on whether you’re talking astronomy or philosophy. You want to talk
astronomy? Bah, what fun is that? You want to talk about how humans think
about the sun? Ah, now that’s more interesting. They’ve got a lot riding on the
sun… er, so to speak. It keeps them warm, grows their crops, powers engines,
makes everything look, well, sunnier. This chariot is built out of human dreams
about the sun, kid. It’s as old as Western Civilization. Every day, it drives across
the sky from east to west, lighting up all those puny little mortal lives. The
chariot is a manifestation of the sun’s power, the way mortals perceive it. Make
sense?’
Nico shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Well then, just think of it as a really powerful, really dangerous solar car.’
‘Can I drive?’
‘No. Too young.’
‘Oo! Oo!’ Grover raised his hand.
‘Mm, no,’ Apollo said. ‘Too furry.’ He looked past me and focused on Thalia.
‘Daughter of Zeus!’ he said. ‘Lord of the sky. Perfect.’
‘Oh, no.’ Thalia shook her head. ‘No, thanks.’
‘C’mon,’ Apollo said. ‘How old are you?’
Thalia hesitated. ‘I don’t know.’
It was sad, but true. She’d been turned into a tree when she was twelve, but
that had been seven years ago. So she should be nineteen, if you went by years.
But she still felt like she was twelve. If you looked at her, though, she seemed
somewhere in between. The best Chiron could work out, she had kept aging
while in tree form, but much more slowly.
Apollo tapped his finger to his lips. ‘You’re fifteen, almost sixteen.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Hey, I’m the god of prophecy. I know stuff. You’ll turn sixteen in about a
week.’
‘That’s my birthday! December twenty-second.’
‘Which means you’re old enough now to drive with a learner’s permit!’
Thalia shifted her feet nervously. ‘Uh –’
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Apollo said. ‘You don’t deserve an honour
like driving the sun chariot.’
‘That’s not what I was going to say.’
‘Don’t sweat it! Maine to Long Island is a really short trip, and don’t worry
about what happened to the last kid I trained. You’re Zeus’s daughter. He’s not
going to blast you out of the sky.’
Apollo laughed good-naturedly. The rest of us didn’t join him.
Thalia tried to protest, but Apollo was absolutely not going to take ‘no’ for an
answer. He hit a button on the dashboard, and a sign popped up along the top of
the windscreen. I had to read it backwards (which, for a dyslexic really isn’t that
different to reading forward). I was pretty sure it said WARNING: STUDENT
DRIVER.
‘Take it away!’ Apollo told Thalia. ‘You’re gonna be a natural!’
I’ll admit I was jealous. I couldn’t wait to start driving. A couple of times that
autumn, my mom had taken me out to Montauk when the beach road was empty,
and she’d let me try out her Mazda. I mean, yeah, that was a Japanese compact,
and this was the sun chariot, but how different could it be?
‘Speed equals heat,’ Apollo advised. ‘So start slowly, and make sure you’ve
got good altitude before you really open her up.’
Thalia gripped the wheel so tightly her knuckles turned white. She looked like
she was going to be sick.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.
‘Nothing,’ she said shakily. ‘N-nothing is wrong.’
She pulled back on the wheel. It tilted and the bus lurched upwards so fast I
fell back and crashed against something soft.
‘Ow,’ Grover said.
‘Sorry.’
‘Slower!’ Apollo said.
‘Sorry!’ Thalia said. ‘I’ve got it under control!’
I managed to get to my feet. Looking out of the window, I saw a smoking ring
of trees from the clearing where we’d taken off.
‘Thalia,’ I said, ‘lighten up on the accelerator.’
‘I’ve got it, Percy,’ she said, gritting her teeth. But she kept it floored.
‘Loosen up,’ I told her.
‘I’m loose!’ Thalia said. She was so stiff she looked like she was made out of
plywood.
‘We need to veer south for Long Island,’ Apollo said. ‘Hang a left.’
Thalia jerked the wheel and again threw me into Grover, who yelped.
‘The other left,’ Apollo suggested.
I made the mistake of looking out of the window again. We were at aeroplane
height now – so high the sky was starting to look black.
‘Ah…’ Apollo said, and I got the feeling he was forcing himself to sound
calm. ‘A little lower, sweetheart. Cape Cod is freezing over.’
Thalia tilted the wheel. Her face was chalk white, her forehead beaded with
sweat. Something was definitely wrong. I’d never seen her like this.
The bus pitched down and somebody screamed. Maybe it was me. Now we
were heading straight towards the Atlantic Ocean at a thousand miles an hour,
the New England coastline off to our left. And it was getting hot in the bus.
Apollo had been thrown somewhere in the back of the bus, but he started
climbing up the rows of seats.
‘Take the wheel!’ Grover begged him.
‘No worries,’ Apollo said. He looked plenty worried. ‘She just has to learn to
– WHOA!’
I saw what he was seeing. Down below us was a little snow-covered New
England town. At least, it used to be snow-covered. As I watched, the snow
melted off the trees and the roofs and the lawns. The white steeple on a church
turned brown and started to smolder. Little plumes of smoke, like birthday
candles, were popping up all over the town. Trees and rooftops were catching
fire.
‘Pull up!’ I yelled.
There was a wild light in Thalia’s eyes. She yanked back on the wheel, and I
held on this time. As we zoomed up, I could see through the back window that
the fires in the town were being snuffed out by the sudden blast of cold.
‘There!’ Apollo pointed. ‘Long Island, dead ahead. Let’s slow down, dear.
‘Dead’ is only an expression.’
Thalia was thundering towards the coastline of northern Long Island. There
was Camp Half-Blood: the valley, the woods, the beach. I could see the dining
pavilion and cabins and the amphitheatre.
‘I’m under control,’ Thalia muttered. ‘I’m under control.’
We were only a few hundred metres away now.
‘Brake,’ Apollo said.
‘I can do this.’
‘BRAKE!’
Thalia slammed her foot on the brake, and the sun bus pitched forward at a
forty-five-degree angle, slamming into the Camp Half-Blood canoe lake with a
huge FLOOOOOOSH! Steam billowed up, sending several frightened naiads
scrambling out of the water with half-woven wicker baskets.
The bus bobbed to the surface along with a couple of capsized, half-melted
canoes.
‘Well,’ said Apollo with a brave smile. ‘You were right, my dear. You had
everything under control! Let’s go see if we boiled anyone important, shall we?’
5 I Make An Underwater Phone Call
I’d never seen Camp Half-Blood in winter before, and the snow surprised me.
See, the camp has the ultimate magic climate control. Nothing gets inside the
borders unless the director, Mr D, wants it to. I thought it would be warm and
sunny, but instead the snow had been allowed to fall lightly. Frost covered the
chariot track and the strawberry fields. The cabins were decorated with tiny
flickering lights, like Christmas lights, except they seemed to be balls of real
fire. More lights glowed in the woods, and, weirdest of all, a fire flickered in the
attic window of the Big House, where the Oracle dwelt, imprisoned in an old
mummified body. I wondered if the spirit of Delphi was roasting marshmallows
up there or something.
‘Whoa,’ Nico said as he climbed off the bus. ‘Is that a climbing wall?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Why is there lava pouring down it?’
‘Little extra challenge. Come on. I’ll introduce you to Chiron. Zoë, have you
met –’
‘I know Chiron,’ Zoë said stiffly. ‘Tell him we will be in Cabin Eight. Hunters,
follow me.’
‘I’ll show you the way,’ Grover offered.
‘We know the way.’
‘Oh, really, it’s no trouble. It’s easy to get lost here, if you don’t –’ he tripped
over a canoe and came up still talking – ‘like my old daddy goat used to say!
Come on!’
Zoë rolled her eyes, but I guess she figured there was no getting rid of Grover.
The Hunters shouldered their packs and their bows and headed off towards the
cabins. As Bianca di Angelo was leaving, she leaned over and whispered
something in her brother’s ear. She looked at him for an answer, but Nico just
scowled and turned away.
‘Take care, sweethearts!’ Apollo called after the Hunters. He winked at me.
‘Watch out for those prophecies, Percy. I’ll see you soon.’
‘What do you mean?’
Instead of answering, he hopped back in the bus. ‘Later, Thalia,’ he called.
‘And, uh, be good!’
He gave her a wicked smile, as if he knew something she didn’t. Then he
closed the doors and revved the engine. I turned aside as the sun chariot took off
in a blast of heat. When I looked back, the lake was steaming. A red Maserati
soared over the woods, glowing brighter and climbing higher until it disappeared
in a ray of sunlight.
Nico was still looking grumpy. I wondered what his sister had told him.
‘Who’s Chiron?’ he asked. ‘I don’t have his figurine.’
‘Our activities director,’ I said. ‘He’s… well, you’ll see.’
‘If those Hunter girls don’t like him,’ Nico grumbled, ‘that’s good enough for
me. Let’s go.’
The second thing that surprised me about camp was how empty it was. I mean, I
knew most half-bloods only trained during the summer. Just the year-rounders
would be here – the ones who didn’t have homes to go to, or would get attacked
by monsters too much if they left. But there didn’t even seem to be many of
them, either.
I spotted Charles Beckendorf from the Hephaestus cabin stoking the forge
outside the camp armoury. The Stoll brothers, Travis and Connor, from the
Hermes cabin, were picking the lock on the camp store. A few kids from the
Ares cabin were having a snowball fight with the wood nymphs at the edge of
the forest. That was about it. Even my old rival from the Ares cabin, Clarisse,
didn’t seem to be around.
The Big House was decorated with strings of red and yellow fireballs that
warmed the porch but didn’t seem to set anything alight. Inside, flames crackled
in the hearth. The air smelled like hot chocolate. Mr D, the camp director, and
Chiron were playing a quiet game of cards in the parlour.
Chiron’s brown beard was shaggier for the winter. His curly hair had grown a
little longer. He wasn’t posing as a teacher this year, so I guess he could afford to
be casual. He wore a fuzzy sweater with a hoof-print design on it, and he had a
blanket on his lap that almost hid his wheelchair completely.
He smiled when he saw us. ‘Percy! Thalia! Ah, and this must be –’
‘Nico di Angelo,’ I said. ‘He and his sister are half-bloods.’
Chiron breathed a sigh of relief. ‘You succeeded, then.’
‘Well…’
His smile melted. ‘What’s wrong? And where is Annabeth?’
‘Oh, dear,’ Mr D said in a bored voice. ‘Not another one lost.’
I’d been trying not to pay attention to Mr D, but he was kind of hard to ignore
in his neon-orange leopard-skin warm-up suit and his purple running shoes.
(Like Mr D had ever run a day in his immortal life.) A golden laurel wreath was
tilted sideways on his curly black hair, which must’ve meant he’d won the last
hand of cards.
‘What do you mean?’ Thalia asked. ‘Who else is lost?’
Just then, Grover trotted into the room, grinning like crazy. He had a black eye
and red lines on his face that looked like a slap mark. ‘The Hunters are all
moved in!’
Chiron frowned. ‘The Hunters, eh? I see we have much to talk about.’ He
glanced at Nico. ‘Grover, perhaps you should take our young friend to the den
and show him our orientation film.’
‘But… Oh, right. Yes, sir.’
‘Orientation film?’ Nico asked. ‘Is it G or PG?’ Cause Bianca is kinda strict –’
‘It’s PG-13,’ Grover said.
‘Cool!’ Nico happily followed him out of the room.
‘Now,’ Chiron said to Thalia and me, ‘perhaps you two should sit down and
tell us the whole story.’
When we were done, Chiron turned to Mr D. ‘We should launch a search for
Annabeth immediately.’
‘I’ll go,’ Thalia and I said at the same time.
Mr D sniffed. ‘Certainly not!’
Thalia and I both started complaining, but Mr D held up his hand. He had that
purplish angry fire in his eyes that usually meant something bad and godly was
going to happen if we didn’t shut up.
‘From what you have told me,’ Mr D said, ‘we have broken even on this
escapade. We have, ah, regrettably lost Annie Bell –’
‘Annabeth,’ I snapped. She’d gone to camp since she was seven, and still Mr
D pretended not to know her name.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘And you procured a small annoying boy to replace her. So
I see no point risking further half-bloods on a ridiculous rescue. The possibility
is very great that this Annie girl is dead.’
I wanted to strangle Mr D. It wasn’t fair Zeus had sent him here to dry out as
camp director for a hundred years. It was meant to be a punishment for Mr D’s
bad behavior on Olympus, but it ended up being a punishment for all of us.
‘Annabeth may be alive,’ Chiron said, but I could tell he was having trouble
sounding upbeat. He’d practically raised Annabeth all those years she was a
year-round camper, before she’d given living with her dad and stepmom a
second try. ‘She’s very bright. If… if our enemies have her, she will try to play
for time. She may even pretend to cooperate.’
‘That’s right,’ Thalia said. ‘Luke would want her alive.’
‘In which case,’ said Mr D, ‘I’m afraid she will have to be smart enough to
escape on her own.’
I got up from the table.
‘Percy.’ Chiron’s tone was full of warning. In the back of my mind, I knew Mr
D was not somebody to mess with. Even if you were an impulsive ADHD kid
like me, he wouldn’t give you any slack. But I was so angry I didn’t care.
‘You’re glad to lose another camper,’ I said. ‘You’d like it if we all
disappeared!’
Mr D stifled a yawn. ‘You have a point?’
‘Yeah,’ I growled. ‘Just because you were sent here as a punishment doesn’t
mean you have to be a lazy jerk! This is your civilization, too. Maybe you could
try helping out a little!’
For a second, there was no sound except the crackle of the fire. The light
reflected in Mr D’s eyes, giving him a sinister look. He opened his mouth to say
something – probably a curse that would blast me to smithereens – when Nico
burst into the room, followed by Grover.
‘SO COOL!’ Nico yelled, holding his hands out to Chiron. ‘You’re… you’re a
centaur!’
Chiron managed a nervous smile. ‘Yes, Mr di Angelo, if you please. Though, I
prefer to stay in human form in this wheelchair for, ah, first encounters.’
‘And, whoa!’ He looked at Mr D. ‘You’re the wine dude? No way!’
Mr D turned his eyes away from me and gave Nico a look of loathing. ‘The
wine dude?’
‘Dionysus, right? Oh, wow! I’ve got your figurine.’
‘My figurine.’
‘In my game, Mythomagic. And a holofoil card, too! And even though you’ve
only got like five hundred attack points and everybody thinks you’re the lamest
god card, I totally think your powers are sweet!’
‘Ah.’ Mr D seemed truly perplexed, which probably saved my life. ‘Well,
that’s… gratifying.’
‘Percy,’ Chiron said quickly, ‘you and Thalia go down to the cabins. Inform
the campers we’ll be playing capture
the flag tomorrow evening.’
‘Capture the flag?’ I asked. ‘But we don’t have enough –’
‘It is a tradition,’ Chiron said. ‘A friendly match, whenever the Hunters visit.’
‘Yeah,’ Thalia muttered. ‘I bet it’s real friendly.’
Chiron jerked his head towards Mr D, who was still frowning as Nico talked
about how many defence points all the gods had in his game. ‘Run along now,’
Chiron told us.
‘Oh, right,’ Thalia said. ‘Come on, Percy.’
She hauled me out of the Big House before Dionysus could remember that he
wanted to kill me.
‘You’ve already got Ares on your bad side,’ Thalia reminded me as we trudged
towards the cabins. ‘You need another immortal enemy?’
She was right. My first summer as a camper, I’d got in a fight with Ares, and
now he and all his children wanted to kill me. I didn’t need to make Dionysus
mad, too.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help it. It’s just so unfair.’
She stopped by the armoury and looked out across the valley, towards the top
of Half-Blood Hill. Her pine tree was still there, the Golden Fleece glittering in
its lowest branch. The tree’s magic still protected the borders of camp, but it no
longer used Thalia’s spirit for power.
‘Percy, everything is unfair,’ Thalia muttered. ‘Sometimes I wish…’
She didn’t finish, but her tone was so sad I felt sorry for her. With her ragged
black hair and her black punk clothes, an old wool overcoat wrapped round her,
she looked like some kind of huge raven, completely out of place in the white
landscape.
‘We’ll get Annabeth back,’ I promised. ‘I just don’t know how yet.’
‘First I found out that Luke is lost,’ she said. ‘Now Annabeth –’
‘Don’t think like that.’
‘You’re right.’ She straightened up. ‘We’ll find a way.’
Over at the basketball court, a few of the Hunters were shooting hoops. One of
them was arguing with a guy from the Ares cabin. The Ares kid had his hand on
his sword and the Hunter girl looked like she was going to exchange her
basketball for a bow and arrow any second.
‘I’ll break that up,’ Thalia said. ‘You circulate round the cabins. Tell
everybody about capture the flag tomorrow.’
‘All right. You should be team captain.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You’ve been at camp longer. You do it.’
‘We can, uh… co-captain or something.’
She looked about as comfortable with that as I felt, but she nodded.
As she headed for the court, I said, ‘Hey, Thalia.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’m sorry about what happened at Westover. I should’ve waited for you
guys.’
‘’S okay, Percy. I probably would’ve done the same thing.’ She shifted from
foot to foot, like she was trying to decide whether or not to say more. ‘You
know, you asked about my mom and I kinda snapped at you. It’s just… I went
back to find her after seven years, and I found out she died in Los Angeles. She,
um… she was a heavy drinker, and apparently she was out driving late one night
about two years ago, and…’ Thalia blinked hard.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah, well. It’s… it’s not like we were ever close. I ran away when I was ten.
Best two years of my life were when I was running around with Luke and
Annabeth. But still –’
‘That’s why you had trouble with the sun van.’
She gave me a wary look. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The way you stiffened up. You must’ve been thinking about your mom, not
wanting to get behind the wheel.’
I was sorry I’d said anything. Thalia’s expression was dangerously close to
Zeus’s, the one time I’d seen him get angry – like any minute, her eyes would
shoot a million volts.
‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘Yeah, that must’ve been it.’
She trudged off towards the court, where the Ares camper and the Hunter
were trying to kill each other with a sword and a basketball.
The cabins were the weirdest collection of buildings you’ve ever seen. Zeus and
Hera’s big white-columned buildings, Cabins One and Two, stood in the middle,
with five gods’ cabins on the left and five goddesses’ cabins on the right, so they
all made a U round the central green and the barbecue hearth.
I made the rounds, telling everybody about capture the flag. I woke up some
Ares kid from his midday nap and he yelled at me to go away. When I asked him
where Clarisse was he said, ‘Went on a quest for Chiron. Top secret!’
‘Is she okay?’
‘Haven’t heard from her in a month. She’s missing in action. Like your butt’s
gonna be if you don’t get outta here!’
I decided to let him go back to sleep.
Finally I got to Cabin Three, the cabin of Poseidon. It was a low grey building
hewn from sea stone, with shells and coral fossils imprinted in the rock. Inside, it
was just as empty as always, except for my bunk. A Minotaur horn hung on the
wall next to my pillow.
I took Annabeth’s baseball cap out of my backpack and set it on my
nightstand. I’d give it to her when I found her. And I would find her.
I took off my wristwatch and activated the shield. It creaked noisily as it
spiralled out. Dr Thorn’s spikes had dented the brass in a dozen places. One gash
kept the shield from opening all the way, so it looked like a pizza with two slices
missing. The beautiful metal pictures that my brother had crafted were all
banged up. In the picture of me and Annabeth fighting the Hydra, it looked like a
meteor had made a crater in my head. I hung the shield on its hook, next to the
Minotaur horn, but it was painful to look at now. Maybe Beckendorf from the
Hephaestus cabin could fix it for me. He was the best armoursmith in the camp.
I’d ask him at dinner.
I was staring at the shield when I noticed a strange sound – water gurgling –
and I realized there was something new in the room. At the back of the cabin
was a big basin of grey sea rock, with a spout like the head of a fish carved in
stone. Out of its mouth burst a stream of water, a saltwater spring that trickled
into the pool. The water must’ve been hot, because it sent mist into the cold
winter air like a sauna. It made the room feel warm and summery, fresh with the
smell of the sea.
I stepped up to the pool. There was no note attached or anything, but I knew it
could only be a gift from Poseidon.
I looked into the water and said, ‘Thanks, Dad.’
The surface rippled. At the bottom of the pool, coins shimmered – a dozen or
so golden drachma. I realized what the fountain was for. It was a reminder to
keep in touch with my family.
I opened the nearest window, and the wintry sunlight made a rainbow in the
mist. Then I fished a coin out of the hot water.
‘Iris, O Goddess of the Rainbow,’ I said, ‘accept my offering.’
I tossed a coin into the mist and it disappeared. Then I realized I didn’t know
who to contact first.
My mom? That would’ve been the ‘good son’ thing to do, but she wouldn’t be
worried about me yet. She was used to me disappearing for days or weeks at a
time.
My father? It had been way too long, almost two years, since I’d actually
talked to him. But could you even send an Iris-message to a god? I’d never tried.
Would it make them mad, like a sales call or something?
I hesitated. Then I made up my mind.
‘Show me Tyson,’ I requested. ‘At the forges of the Cyclopes.’
The mist shimmered, and the image of my half-brother appeared. He was
surrounded by fire, which would’ve been a problem if he weren’t a Cyclops. He
was bent over an anvil, hammering a red-hot sword blade. Sparks flew and
flames swirled around his body. There was a marble-framed window behind him,
and it looked out onto dark blue water – the bottom of the ocean.
‘Tyson!’ I yelled.
He didn’t hear me at first because of the hammering and the roar of the
flames.
‘TYSON!’
He turned, and his one enormous eye widened. His face broke into a crooked
yellow grin. ‘Percy!’
He dropped the sword blade and ran at me, trying to give me a hug. The vision
blurred and I instinctively lurched back. ‘Tyson, it’s an Iris-message. I’m not
really here.’
‘Oh.’ He came back into view, looking embarrassed. ‘Oh, I knew that. Yes.’
‘How are you?’ I asked. ‘How’s the job?’
His eye lit up. ‘Love the job! Look!’ He picked up the hot sword blade with
his bare hands. ‘I made this!’
‘That’s really cool.’
‘I wrote my name on it. Right there.’
‘Awesome. Listen, do you talk to Dad much?’
Tyson’s smile faded. ‘Not much. Daddy is busy. He is worried about the war.’
‘What do you mean?’
Tyson sighed. He stuck the sword blade out the window, where it made a
cloud of boiling bubbles. When Tyson brought it back in, the metal was cool.
‘Old sea spirits making trouble. Aigaios. Oceanus. Those guys.’
I sort of knew what he was talking about. He meant the immortals who ruled
the oceans back in the days of the Titans. Before the Olympians took over. The
fact that they were back now, with the Titan Lord Kronos and his allies gaining
strength, was not good.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ I asked.
Tyson shook his head sadly. ‘We are arming the mermaids. They need a
thousand more swords by tomorrow.’ He looked at his sword blade and sighed.
‘Old spirits are protecting the bad boat.’
‘The Princess Andromeda?’ I said. ‘Luke’s boat?’
‘Yes. They make it hard to find. Protect it from Daddy’s storms. Otherwise he
would smash it.’
‘Smashing it would be good.’
Tyson perked up, as if he’d just had another thought. ‘Annabeth! Is she there?’
‘Oh, well…’ My heart felt like a bowling ball. Tyson thought Annabeth was
just about the coolest thing since peanut butter (and he seriously loved peanut
butter). I didn’t have the heart to tell him she was missing. He’d start crying so
bad he’d probably put out his fires. ‘Well, no… she’s not here right now.’
‘Tell her hello!’ He beamed. ‘Hello to Annabeth!’
‘Okay.’ I fought back a lump in my throat. ‘I’ll do that.’
‘And, Percy, don’t worry about the bad boat. It is going away.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Panama Canal! Very far away.’
I frowned. Why would Luke take his demon-infested cruise ship all the way
down there? The last time we’d seen him, he’d been cruising along the East
Coast, recruiting half-bloods and training his monstrous army.
‘All right,’ I said, not feeling reassured. ‘That’s… good. I guess.’
In the forges, a deep voice bellowed something I couldn’t make out. Tyson
flinched. ‘Got to get back to work! Boss will get mad. Good luck, brother!’
‘Okay, tell Dad –’
But before I could finish the vision shimmered and faded. I was alone again in
my cabin, feeling even lonelier than before.
I was pretty miserable at dinner that night.
I mean, the food was excellent as usual. You can’t go wrong with barbecue,
pizza and never-empty soda goblets. The torches and braziers kept the outdoor
pavilion warm, but we all had to sit with our cabin mates, which meant I was
alone at the Poseidon table. Thalia sat alone at the Zeus table, but we couldn’t sit
together. Camp rules. At least the Hephaestus, Ares and Hermes cabins had a
few people each. Nico sat with the Stoll brothers, since new campers always got
stuck in the Hermes cabin if their Olympian parent was unknown. The Stoll
brothers seemed to be trying to convince Nico that poker was a much better
game than Mythomagic. I hoped Nico didn’t have any money to lose.
The only table that really seemed to be having a good time was the Artemis
table. The Hunters drank and ate and laughed like one big happy family. Zoë sat
at the head like she was the mama. She didn’t laugh as much as the others, but
she did smile from time to time. Her silver lieutenant’s band glittered in the dark
braids of her hair. I thought she looked a lot nicer when she smiled. Bianca di
Angelo seemed to be having a great time. She was trying to learn how to arm
wrestle from the big girl who’d picked a fight with the Ares kid on the basketball
court. The bigger girl was beating her every time, but Bianca didn’t seem to
mind.
When we’d finished eating, Chiron made the customary toast to the gods and
formally welcomed the Hunters of Artemis. The clapping was pretty halfhearted. Then he announced the ‘goodwill’ capture-the-flag game for tomorrow
night, which got a much better reception.
Afterwards, we all trailed back to our cabins for an early, winter lights out. I
was exhausted, which meant I fell asleep easily. That was the good part. The bad
part was I had a nightmare, and even by my standards it was a whopper.
Annabeth was on a dark hillside, shrouded in fog. It almost seemed like the
Underworld, because I immediately felt claustrophobic and I couldn’t see the
sky above – just a close heavy darkness, as if I were in a cave.
Annabeth struggled up the hill. Old broken Greek columns of black marble
were scattered around, as though something had blasted a huge building to ruins.
‘Thorn!’ Annabeth cried. ‘Where are you? Why did you bring me here?’ She
scrambled over a section of broken wall and came to the crest of the hill.
She gasped.
There was Luke. And he was in pain.
He was crumpled on the rocky ground, trying to rise. The blackness seemed to
be thicker around him, fog swirling hungrily. His clothes were in tatters and his
face was scratched and drenched with sweat.
‘Annabeth!’ he called. ‘Help me! Please!’
She ran forward.
I tried to cry out: He’s a traitor! Don’t trust him!
But my voice didn’t work in the dream.
Annabeth had tears in her eyes. She reached down like she wanted to touch
Luke’s face, but at the last second she hesitated.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘They left me here,’ Luke groaned. ‘Please. It’s killing me.’
I couldn’t see what was wrong with him. He seemed to be struggling against
some invisible curse, as though the fog were squeezing him to death.
‘Why should I trust you?’ Annabeth asked. Her voice was filled with hurt.
‘You shouldn’t,’ Luke said. ‘I’ve been terrible to you. But, if you don’t help
me, I’ll die.’
Let him die, I wanted to scream. Luke had tried to kill us in cold blood too
many times. He didn’t deserve anything from Annabeth.
Then the darkness above Luke began to crumble, like a cavern roof in an
earthquake. Huge chunks of black rock began falling. Annabeth rushed in just as
a crack appeared, and the whole ceiling dropped. She held it somehow – tons of
rock. She kept it from collapsing on her and Luke just with her own strength. It
was impossible. She shouldn’t have been able to do that.
Luke rolled free, gasping. ‘Thanks,’ he managed.
‘Help me hold it,’ Annabeth groaned.
Luke caught his breath. His face was covered in grime and sweat. He rose
unsteadily.
‘I knew I could count on you.’ He began to walk away as the trembling
blackness threatened to crush Annabeth.
‘HELP ME!’ she pleaded.
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Luke said. ‘Your help is on the way. It’s all part of the plan.
In the meantime, try not to die.’
The ceiling of darkness began to crumble more, pushing Annabeth against the
ground.
I sat bolt upright in bed, clawing at the sheets. There was no sound in my cabin
except the gurgle of the saltwater spring. The clock on my nightstand read just
after midnight.
Only a dream, but I was sure of two things: Annabeth was in terrible danger.
And Luke was responsible.
6
An Old Dead Friend Comes To Visit
The next morning after breakfast, I told Grover about my dream. We sat in the
meadow watching the satyrs chase the wood nymphs through the snow. The
nymphs had promised to kiss the satyrs if they got caught, but they hardly ever
did. Usually the nymph would let the satyr get up a full head of steam, then
she’d turn into a snow-covered tree and the poor satyr would slam into it head
first and get a pile of snow dumped on him.
When I told Grover my nightmare, he started twirling his finger in his shaggy
leg fur.
‘A cave ceiling collapsed on her?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. What the heck does that mean?’
Grover shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But after what Zoë dreamed –’
‘Whoa. What do you mean? Zoë had a dream like that?’
‘I… I don’t know, exactly. About three in the morning she came to the Big
House and demanded to talk to Chiron. She looked really panicked.’
‘Wait, how do you know this?’
Grover blushed. ‘I was sort of camped outside the Artemis cabin.’
‘What for?’
‘Just to be, you know, near them.’
‘You’re a stalker with hooves.’
‘I am not! Anyway, I followed her to the Big House and hid in a bush and
watched the whole thing. She got really upset when Argus wouldn’t let her in. It
was kind of a dangerous scene.’
I tried to imagine that. Argus was the head of security for camp – a big blond
dude with eyes all over his body. He rarely showed himself unless something
serious was going on. I wouldn’t want to place bets on a fight between him and
Zoë Nightshade.
‘What did she say?’ I asked.
Grover grimaced. ‘Well, she starts talking really old-fashioned when she gets
upset, so it was kind of hard to understand. But something about Artemis being
in trouble and needing the Hunters. And then she called Argus a boil-brained
lout… I think that’s a bad thing. And then he called her –’
‘Whoa, wait. How could Artemis be in trouble?’
‘I… well, finally Chiron came out in his pyjamas and his horse tail in curlers
and –’
‘He wears curlers in his tail?’
Grover covered his mouth.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, Zoë said she needed permission to leave camp immediately. Chiron
refused. He reminded Zoë that the Hunters were supposed to stay here until they
received orders from Artemis. And she said…’ Grover gulped. ‘She said, “How
are we to get orders from Artemis if Artemis is lost?”’
‘What do you mean lost? Like she needs directions?’
‘No. I think she meant gone. Taken. Kidnapped.’
‘Kidnapped?’ I tried to get my mind round that idea. ‘How would you kidnap
an immortal goddess? Is that even possible?’
‘Well, yeah. I mean, it happened to Persephone.’
‘But she was like, the goddess of flowers.’
Grover looked offended. ‘Springtime.’
‘Whatever. Artemis is a lot more powerful than that. Who could kidnap her?
And why?’
Grover shook his head miserably. ‘I don’t know. Kronos?’
‘He can’t be that powerful already. Can he?’
The last time we’d seen Kronos, he’d been in tiny pieces. Well… we hadn’t
actually seen him. Thousands of years ago, after the big Titan-God war, the gods
had sliced him to bits with his own scythe and scattered his remains in Tartarus,
which is like the gods’ bottomless recycling bin for their enemies. Two summers
ago, Kronos had tricked us to the very edge of the pit and almost pulled us in.
Then last summer, on board Luke’s demon cruise ship, we’d seen a golden
coffin, where Luke claimed he was summoning the Titan Lord out of the abyss,
bit by bit, every time someone new joined their cause. Kronos could influence
people with dreams and trick them, but I didn’t see how he could physically
overcome Artemis if he were still like a pile of evil bark mulch.
‘I don’t know,’ Grover said. ‘I think somebody would know if Kronos had reformed. The gods would be more nervous. But, still, it’s weird – you having a
nightmare the same night as Zoë. It’s almost like –’
‘They’re connected,’ I said.
Over in the frozen meadow, a satyr skidded on his hooves as he chased after a
redheaded tree nymph. She giggled and held out her arms as he ran towards her.
Pop! She turned into a Scotch pine and he kissed the trunk at top speed.
‘Ah, love,’ Grover said dreamily.
I thought about Zoë’s nightmare, which she’d had only a few hours after mine.
‘I’ve got to talk to Zoë,’ I said.
‘Um, before you do…’ Grover took something out of his coat pocket. It was a
three-fold display like a travel brochure. ‘You remember what you said – about
how it was weird the Hunters just happened to show up at Westover Hall? I think
they might’ve been scouting us.’
‘Scouting us? What do you mean?’
He gave me the brochure. It was about the Hunters of Artemis. The front read,
A WISE CHOICE FOR YOUR FUTURE! Inside were pictures of young
maidens doing hunter stuff, chasing monsters, shooting bows. There were
captions like: HEALTH BENEFITS: IMMORTALITY AND WHAT IT MEANS
FOR YOU! And A BOY-FREE TOMORROW!
‘I found that in Annabeth’s backpack,’ Grover said.
I stared at him. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, it seems to me… maybe Annabeth was thinking about joining.’
I’d like to say I took the news well.
The truth was I wanted to strangle the Hunters of Artemis one eternal maiden
at a time. The rest of the day I tried to keep busy, but I was worried sick about
Annabeth. I went to javelin-throwing class, but the Ares camper in charge yelled
at me after I got distracted and threw the javelin at the target before he got out of
the way. I apologized for the hole in his trousers, but he still sent me packing.
I visited the pegasus stables, but Silena Beauregard from the Aphrodite cabin
was having an argument with one of the Hunters, and I decided I’d better not get
involved.
After that, I sat in the empty chariot stands and sulked. Down at the archery
fields, Chiron was conducting target practice. I knew he’d be the best person to
talk to. Maybe he could give me some advice, but something held me back. I had
a feeling Chiron would try to protect me, like he always did. He might not tell
me everything he knew.
I looked in the other direction. At the top of Half-Blood Hill, Mr D and Argus
were feeding the baby dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece.
Then it occurred to me: no one would be in the Big House. There was
someone else… something else I could ask for guidance.
My blood was humming in my ears as I ran into the house and took the stairs.
I’d only done this once before, and I still had nightmares about it. I opened the
trapdoor and stepped into the attic.
The room was dark and dusty and cluttered with junk, just like I remembered.
There were shields with monster bites out of them, and swords bent in the shapes
of daemon heads, and a bunch of taxidermy, like a stuffed harpy and a bright
orange python.
Over by the window, sitting on a three-legged stool, was the shrivelled-up
mummy of an old lady in a tie-dyed hippie dress. The Oracle.
I made myself walk towards her. I waited for green mist to billow from the
mummy’s mouth, like it had before, but nothing happened.
‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Uh, what’s up?’
I winced at how stupid that sounded. Not much could be ‘up’ when you’re
dead and stuck in the attic. But I knew the spirit of the Oracle was in there
somewhere. I could feel a cold presence in the room, like a coiled sleeping
snake.
‘I have a question,’ I said a little louder. ‘I need to know about Annabeth. How
can I save her?’
No answer. The sun slanted through the dirty attic window, making the dust
motes dance in the air.
I waited longer.
Then I got angry. I was being stonewalled by a corpse.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Fine. I’ll figure it out myself.’
I turned and bumped into a big table full of souvenirs. It seemed more
cluttered than the last time I was here. Heroes stored all kinds of stuff in the
attic: quest trophies they no longer wanted to keep in their cabins, or stuff that
held painful memories. I knew Luke had stored a dragon claw somewhere up
here – the one that had scarred his face. There was a broken sword hilt labelled:
This broke and Leroy got killed. 1999.
Then I noticed a pink silk scarf with a label attached to it. I picked up the tag
and tried to read it:
SCARF OF THE GODDESS APHRODITE
Recovered at Waterland, Denver, Co.,
by Annabeth Chase and Percy Jackson
I stared at the scarf. I’d totally forgotten about it. Two years ago, Annabeth had
ripped this scarf out of my hands and said something like, Oh, no. No love magic
for you!
I’d just assumed she’d thrown it away. And yet here it was. She’d kept it all
this time? And why had she stashed it in the attic?
I turned to the mummy. She hadn’t moved, but the shadows across her face
made it look like she was smiling gruesomely.
I dropped the scarf and tried not to run towards the exit.
That night after dinner, I was seriously ready to beat the Hunters at capture the
flag. It was going to be a small game. Only thirteen Hunters, including Bianca di
Angelo, and about the same number of campers.
Zoë Nightshade looked pretty upset. She kept glancing resentfully at Chiron,
like she couldn’t believe he was making her do this. The other Hunters didn’t
look too happy either. Unlike last night, they weren’t laughing or joking around.
They just huddled together in the dining pavilion, whispering nervously to each
other as they strapped on their armour. Some of them even looked like they’d
been crying. I guess Zoë had told them about her nightmare.
On our team, we had Beckendorf and two other Hephaestus guys, a few from
the Ares cabin (though it still seemed strange that Clarisse wasn’t around), the
Stoll brothers and Nico from Hermes cabin, and a few Aphrodite kids. It was
weird that the Aphrodite cabin wanted to play. Usually they sat on the sidelines,
chatted and checked their reflections in the river and stuff, but when they heard
we were fighting the Hunters, they were raring to go.
‘I’ll show them “love is worthless”,’ Silena Beauregard grumbled as she
strapped on her armour. I’ll pulverize them!’
That left Thalia and me.
‘I’ll take the offence,’ Thalia volunteered. ‘You take defence.’
‘Oh.’ I hesitated, because I’d been about to say the exact same thing, only
reversed. ‘Don’t you think, with your shield and all, you’d be better defence?’
Thalia already had Aegis on her arm, and even our own teammates were
giving her a wide berth, trying not to cower before the bronze head of Medusa.
‘Well, I was thinking it would make better offence,’ Thalia said. ‘Besides,
you’ve had more practice at defence.’
I wasn’t sure if she was teasing me. I’d had some pretty bad experiences with
defence on capture the flag. My first year, Annabeth had put me out as a kind of
bait, and I’d almost been gored to death with spears and killed by a hellhound.
‘Yeah, no problem,’ I lied.
‘Cool.’ Thalia turned to help some of the Aphrodite kids, who were having
trouble suiting up their armour without breaking their nails. Nico di Angelo ran
up to me with a big grin on his face.
‘Percy, this is awesome!’ His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his
eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big. I wondered if there was any
way I’d looked that ridiculous when I’d first arrived. Unfortunately, I probably
had.
Nico lifted his sword with effort. ‘Do we get to kill the other team?’
‘Well… no.’
‘But the Hunters are immortal, right?’
‘That’s only if they don’t fall in battle. Besides –’
‘It would be awesome if we just, like, resurrected as soon as we were killed,
so we could keep fighting, and –’
‘Nico, this is serious. Real swords. These can hurt.’
He stared at me, a little disappointed, and I realized that I’d just sounded like
my mother. Whoa. Not a good sign.
I patted Nico on the shoulder. ‘Hey, it’s cool. Just follow the team. Stay out of
Zoë’s way. We’ll have a blast.’
Chiron’s hoof thundered on the pavilion floor.
‘Heroes!’ he called. ‘You know the rules! The river is the boundary line. Blue
team, Camp Half-Blood, shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis, red
team, shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No
intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!’
‘Sweet,’ Nico whispered next to me. ‘What kind of magic items? Do I get
one?’
I was about to break it to him that he didn’t, when Thalia said, ‘Blue team!
Follow me!’
They cheered and followed. I had to run to catch up, and tripped over
somebody’s shield, so I didn’t look much like a co-captain. More like an idiot.
We set our flag at the top of Zeus’s Fist. It’s this cluster of boulders in the middle
of the west woods that, if you look at it just the right way, looks like a huge fist
sticking out of the ground. If you look at it from any other side, it looks like a
pile of enormous deer droppings, but Chiron wouldn’t let us call the place the
Poop Pile, especially after it had been named for Zeus, who doesn’t have much
of a sense of humor.
Anyway, it was a good place to set the flag. The top boulder was six metres
tall and really hard to climb, so the flag was clearly visible, like the rules said it
had to be, and it didn’t matter that the guards weren’t allowed to stand within ten
metres of it.
I set Nico on guard duty with Beckendorf and the Stoll brothers, figuring he’d
be safely out of the way.
‘We’ll send out a decoy to the left,’ Thalia told the team. ‘Silena, you lead
that.’
‘Got it!’
‘Take Laurel and Jason. They’re good runners. Make a wide arc round the
Hunters, attract as many as you can. I’ll take the main raiding party round to the
right and catch them by surprise.’
Everybody nodded. It sounded good, and Thalia said it with such confidence
you couldn’t help but believe it would work.
Thalia looked at me. ‘Anything to add, Percy?’
‘Um, yeah. Keep sharp on defence. We’ve got four guards, two scouts. That’s
not much for a big forest. I’ll be roving. Yell if you need help.’
‘And don’t leave your post!’ Thalia said.
‘Unless you see a golden opportunity,’ I added.
Thalia scowled. ‘Just don’t leave your post.’
‘Right, unless –’
‘Percy!’ She touched my arm and shocked me. I mean, everybody can give
static shocks in the winter, but when Thalia does, it hurts. I guess it’s because her
dad is the god of lightning. She’s been known to fry off people’s eyebrows.
‘Sorry,’ Thalia said, though she didn’t sound particularly sorry. ‘Now, is
everybody clear?’
Everybody nodded. We broke into our smaller groups. The horn sounded, and
the game began.
Silena’s group disappeared into the woods on the left. Thalia’s group gave it a
few seconds, then darted off towards the right.
I waited for something to happen. I climbed Zeus’s Fist and had a good view
over the forest. I remembered how the Hunters had stormed out of the woods
when they fought the manticore, and I was prepared for something like that –
one huge charge that could overwhelm us. But nothing happened.
I caught a glimpse of Silena and her two scouts. They ran through a clearing,
followed by five of the Hunters, leading them deep into the woods and away
from Thalia. The plan seemed to be working. Then I spotted another clump of
Hunters heading to the right, bows ready. They must’ve spotted Thalia.
‘What’s happening?’ Nico demanded, trying to climb up next to me.
My mind was racing. Thalia would never get through, but the Hunters were
divided. With that many on either flank, their centre had to be wide open. If I
moved fast…
I looked at Beckendorf. ‘Can you guys hold the fort?’
Beckendorf snorted. ‘Of course.’
‘I’m going in.’
The Stoll brothers and Nico cheered as I raced towards the boundary line.
I was running at top speed and I felt great. I leaped over the creek into enemy
territory. I could see their silver flag up ahead, only one guard, who wasn’t even
looking in my direction. I heard fighting to my left and right, somewhere in the
woods. I had it made.
The guard turned at the last minute. It was Bianca di Angelo. Her eyes
widened as I slammed into her and she went sprawling in the snow.
‘Sorry!’ I yelled. I ripped down the silver silk flag from the tree and took off.
I was ten metres away before Bianca managed to yell for help. I thought I was
home free.
ZIP! A silvery cord raced across my ankles and fastened to the tree next to me.
A trip wire, fired from a bow! Before I could even think about stopping I went
down hard, sprawling in the snow.
‘Percy!’ Thalia yelled, off to my left. ‘What are you doing?’
Before she reached me, an arrow exploded at her feet and a cloud of yellow
smoke billowed around her team. They started coughing and gagging. I could
smell the gas from across the woods – the horrible smell of sulphur.
‘No fair!’ Thalia gasped. ‘Fart arrows are unsportsmanlike!’
I got up and started running again. Only a few more metres to the river and I
had the game. More arrows whizzed past my ears. A Hunter came out of
nowhere and slashed at me with her knife, but I parried and kept running.
I heard yelling from our side of the river. Beckendorf and Nico were running
towards me. I thought they were coming to welcome me back, but then I saw
they were chasing someone – Zoë Nightshade, racing towards me like a cheetah,
dodging campers with no trouble. And she had our flag in her hands.
‘No!’ I yelled, and poured on the speed.
I was a metre from the water when Zoë bolted across to her own side,
slamming into me for good measure. The Hunters cheered as both sides
converged on the creek. Chiron appeared out of the woods, looking grim. He had
the Stoll brothers on his back, and it looked as if both of them had taken some
nasty whacks to the head. Connor Stoll had two arrows sticking out of his helmet
like antennae.
‘The Hunters win!’ Chiron announced without pleasure. Then he muttered,
‘For the fifty-sixth time in a row.’
‘Perseus Jackson!’ Thalia yelled, storming towards me. She smelled like
rotten eggs, and she was so mad that blue sparks flickered on her armour.
Everybody cringed and backed up because of Aegis. It took all my willpower not
to cower.
‘What in the name of the gods were you THINKING?’ she bellowed.
I balled my fists. I’d had enough bad stuff happen to me for one day. I didn’t
need this. ‘I got the flag, Thalia!’ I shook it in her face. ‘I saw a chance and I
took it!’
‘I WAS AT THEIR BASE!’ Thalia yelled. ‘But the flag was gone. If you
hadn’t butted in, we would’ve won.’
‘You had too many on you!’
‘Oh, so it’s my fault?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Argh!’ Thalia pushed me, and a shock went through my body that blew me
backwards three metres into the water. Some of the campers gasped. A couple of
the Hunters stifled laughs.
‘Sorry!’ Thalia said, turning pale. ‘I didn’t mean to –’
Anger roared in my ears. A wave erupted from the river, blasting into Thalia’s
face and dousing her from head to toe.
I stood up. ‘Yeah,’ I growled. ‘I didn’t mean to either.’
Thalia was breathing heavily.
‘Enough!’ Chiron ordered.
But Thalia held out her spear. ‘You want some, Seaweed Brain?’
Somehow, it was okay when Annabeth called me that – at least, I’d got used to
it – but hearing it from Thalia was not cool.
‘Bring it on, Pinecone Face!’
I raised Riptide, but before I could even defend myself, Thalia yelled, and a
blast of lightning came down from the sky, hit her spear like a lightning rod, and
slammed into my chest.
I sat down hard. There was a burning smell; I had a feeling it was my clothes.
‘Thalia!’ Chiron said. ‘That is enough!’
I got to my feet and willed the entire river to rise. It swirled up, hundreds of
gallons of water in a massive icy funnel cloud.
‘Percy!’ Chiron pleaded.
I was about to hurl it at Thalia when I saw something in the woods. I lost my
anger and my concentration all at once. The water splashed back into the
riverbed. Thalia was so surprised she turned to see what I was looking at.
Someone… something was approaching. It was shrouded in a murky green
mist, but as it got closer, the campers and Hunters gasped.
‘This is impossible,’ Chiron said. I’d never heard him sound so nervous. ‘It…
she has never left the attic. Never.’
And yet the withered mummy that held the Oracle shuffled forward until she
stood in the centre of the group. Mist curled around our feet, turning the snow a
sickly shade of green.
None of us dared move. Then her voice hissed inside my head. Apparently
everyone could hear it, because several clutched their hands over the ears.
I am the spirit of Delphi, the voice said. Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus
Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python.
The Oracle regarded me with its cold, dead eyes. Then she turned
unmistakably towards Zoë Nightshade. Approach, Seeker, and ask.
Zoë swallowed. ‘What must I do to help my goddess?’
The Oracle’s mouth opened, and green mist poured out. I saw the vague image
of a mountain, and a girl standing at the barren peak. It was Artemis, but she was
wrapped in chains, fettered to the rocks. She was kneeling, her hands raised as if
to fend off an attacker, and it looked like she was in pain. The Oracle spoke:
Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,
One shall be lost in the land without rain,
The bane of Olympus shows the trail,
Campers and Hunters combined prevail,
The Titan’s curse must one withstand,
And one shall perish by a parent’s hand.
Then, as we were watching, the Mist swirled and retreated like a great green
serpent into the mummy’s mouth. The Oracle sat down on a rock and became as
still as she’d been in the attic, as if she might sit by this creek for a hundred
years.
7
Everybody Hates Me But The Horse
The least the Oracle could’ve done was walk back to the attic by herself.
Instead, Grover and I were elected to carry her. I didn’t figure that was
because we were the most popular.
‘Watch her head!’ Grover warned as we went up the stairs. But it was too late.
Bonk! I whacked her mummified face against the trapdoor frame and dust
flew.
‘Ah, man.’ I set her down and checked for damage. ‘Did I break anything?’
‘I can’t tell,’ Grover admitted.
We hauled her up and set her on her tripod stool, both of us huffing and
sweating. Who knew a mummy could weigh so much?
I assumed she wouldn’t talk to me, and I was right. I was relieved when we
finally got out of there and slammed the attic door shut.
‘Well,’ Grover said, ‘that was gross.’
I knew he was trying to keep things light for my sake, but I still felt really
down. The whole camp would be mad at me for losing the game to the Hunters,
and then there was the new prophecy from the Oracle. It was like the spirit of
Delphi had gone out of her way to exclude me. She’d ignored my question and
walked half a mile to talk to Zoë. And she’d said nothing, not even a hint, about
Annabeth.
‘What will Chiron do?’ I asked Grover.
‘I wish I knew.’ He looked wistfully out of the second-floor window at the
rolling hills covered in snow. ‘I want to be out there.’
‘Searching for Annabeth?’
He had a little trouble focusing on me. Then he blushed. ‘Oh, right. That too.
Of course.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What were you thinking?’
He clopped his hooves uneasily. ‘Just something the manticore said, about the
Great Stirring. I can’t help but wonder… if all those ancient powers are waking
up, maybe… maybe not all of them are evil.’
‘You mean Pan.’
I felt kind of selfish, because I’d totally forgotten about Grover’s life
ambition. The nature god had gone missing two thousand years ago. He was
rumoured to have died, but the satyrs didn’t believe that. They were determined
to find him. They’d been searching in vain for centuries, and Grover was
convinced he’d be the one to succeed. This year, with Chiron putting all the
satyrs on emergency duty to find half-bloods, Grover hadn’t been able to
continue his search. It must’ve been driving him nuts.
‘I’ve let the trail go cold,’ he said. ‘I feel restless, like I’m missing something
really important. He’s out there somewhere. I can just feel it.’
I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to encourage him, but I didn’t know how.
My optimism had pretty much been trampled into the snow out there in the
woods, along with our capture-the-flag hopes.
Before I could respond, Thalia tromped up the stairs. She was officially not
talking to me now, but she looked at Grover and said, ‘Tell Percy to get his butt
downstairs.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Did he say something?’ Thalia asked Grover.
‘Um, he asked why.’
‘Dionysus is calling a council of cabin leaders to discuss the prophecy,’ she
said. ‘Unfortunately, that includes Percy.’
The council was held round a ping-pong table in the rec room. Dionysus waved
his hand and supplied snacks: Cheez Whiz, crackers and several bottles of red
wine. Then Chiron reminded him that wine was against his restrictions and most
of us were underage. Mr D sighed. With a snap of his fingers the wine turned to
Diet Coke. Nobody drank that either.
Mr D and Chiron (in wheelchair form) sat at one end of the table. Zoë and
Bianca di Angelo (who had kind of become Zoë’s personal assistant) took the
other end. Thalia and Grover and I sat along the right, and the other head
councillors, Beckendorf, Silena Beauregard, and the Stoll brothers, sat on the
left. The Ares kids were supposed to send a representative, too, but all of them
had got broken limbs (accidentally) during capture the flag, courtesy of the
Hunters. They were resting up in the infirmary.
Zoë started the meeting off on a positive note. ‘This is pointless.’
‘Cheez Whiz!’ Grover gasped. He began scooping up crackers and ping-pong
balls and spraying them with topping.
‘There is no time for talk,’ Zoë continued. ‘Our goddess needs us. The
Hunters must leave immediately.’
‘And go where?’ Chiron asked.
‘West!’ Bianca said. I was amazed at how different she looked after just a few
days with the Hunters. Her dark hair was braided like Zoë’s now, so you could
actually see her face. She had a splash of freckles across her nose, and her dark
eyes vaguely reminded me of someone famous, but I couldn’t think who. She
looked like she’d been working out, and her skin glowed faintly, like the other
Hunters, as if she’d been taking showers in liquid moonlight. ‘You heard the
prophecy. ‘Five shall go west to the goddess in chains.’ We can get five hunters
and go.’
‘Yes,’ Zoë agreed. ‘Artemis is being held hostage! We must find her and free
her.’
‘You’re missing something, as usual,’ Thalia said. ‘Campers and Hunters
combined prevail. We’re supposed to do this together.’
‘No!’ Zoë said. ‘The Hunters do not need thy help.’
‘Your,’ Thalia grumbled. ‘Nobody has said thy in like three hundred years,
Zoë. Get with the times.’
Zoë hesitated, like she was trying to form the word correctly. ‘Yerrr. We do not
need yerrr help.’
Thalia rolled her eyes. ‘Forget it.’
‘I fear the prophecy says you do need our help,’ Chiron said. ‘Campers and
Hunters must cooperate.’
‘Or do they?’ Mr D mused, swirling his Diet Coke under his nose like it had a
fine bouquet. ‘One shall be lost. One shall perish. That sounds rather nasty,
doesn’t it? What if you fail because you try to cooperate?’
‘Mr D,’ Chiron sighed, ‘with all due respect, whose side are you on?’
Dionysus raised his eyebrows. ‘Sorry, my dear centaur. Just trying to be
helpful.’
‘We’re supposed to work together,’ Thalia said stubbornly. ‘I don’t like it
either, Zoë, but you know prophecies. You want to fight against one?’
Zoë grimaced, but I could tell Thalia had scored a point.
‘We must not delay,’ Chiron warned. ‘Today is Sunday. This very Friday,
December twenty-first, is the winter solstice.’
‘Oh, joy,’ Dionysus muttered. ‘Another dull annual meeting.’
‘Artemis must be present at the solstice,’ Zoë said. ‘She has been one of the
most vocal on the council arguing for action against Kronos’s minions. If she is
absent, the gods will decide nothing. We will lose another year of war
preparations.’
‘Are you suggesting that the gods have trouble acting together, young lady?’
Dionysus asked.
‘Yes, Lord Dionysus.’
Mr D nodded. ‘Just checking. You’re right, of course. Carry on.’
‘I must agree with Zoë,’ said Chiron. ‘Artemis’s presence at the winter council
is critical. We have only a week to find her. And possibly even more important:
to locate the monster she was hunting. Now, we must decide who goes on this
quest.’
‘Three and two,’ I said.
Everybody looked at me. Even Thalia forgot to ignore me.
‘We’re supposed to have five,’ I said, feeling self-conscious. ‘Three Hunters,
two from Camp Half-Blood. That’s more than fair.’
Thalia and Zoë exchanged looks.
‘Well,’ Thalia said. ‘It does make sense.’
Zoë grunted. ‘I would prefer to take all the Hunters. We will need strength of
numbers.’
‘You’ll be retracing the goddess’s path,’ Chiron reminded her. ‘Moving
quickly. No doubt Artemis tracked the scent of this rare monster, whatever it is,
as she moved west. You will have to do the same. The prophecy was clear: The
bane of Olympus shows the trail. What would your mistress say? “Too many
Hunters spoil the scent.” A small group is best.’
Zoë picked up a ping-pong paddle and studied it like she was deciding who
she wanted to whack first. ‘This monster – the bane of Olympus. I have hunted
at Lady Artemis’s side for many years, yet I have no idea what this beast might
be.’
Everybody looked at Dionysus, I guess because he was the only god present
and gods are supposed to know things. He was flipping through a wine
magazine, but when everyone got silent he glanced up. ‘Well, don’t look at me.
I’m a young god, remember? I don’t keep track of all those ancient monsters and
dusty Titans. They make for terrible party conversation.’
‘Chiron,’ I said, ‘you don’t have any ideas about the monster?’
Chiron pursed his lips. ‘I have several ideas, none of them good. And none of
them quite make sense. Typhon, for instance, could fit this description. He was
truly a bane of Olympus. Or the sea monster Ketos. But if either of these were
stirring, we would know it. They are ocean monsters the size of skyscrapers.
Your father Poseidon would already have sounded the alarm. I fear this monster
may be more elusive. Perhaps even more powerful.’
‘That’s some serious danger you’re facing,’ Connor Stoll said. (I liked how he
said you and not we.) ‘It sounds like at least two of the five are going to die.’
‘One shall be lost in the land without rain,’ Beckendorf said. ‘If I were you,
I’d stay out of the desert.’
There was a muttering of agreement.
‘And the Titan’s curse must one withstand,’ Silena said. ‘What could that
mean?’
I saw Chiron and Zoë exchange a nervous look, but whatever they were
thinking, they didn’t share it.
‘One shall perish by a parent’s hand,’ Grover said in between bites of Cheez
Whiz and ping-pong balls. ‘How is that possible? Whose parent would kill
them?’
There was a heavy silence round the table.
I glanced at Thalia and wondered if she was thinking the same thing I was.
Years ago, Chiron had had a prophecy about the next child of the Big Three –
Zeus, Poseidon or Hades – who turned sixteen. Supposedly, that kid would make
a decision that would save or destroy the gods forever. Because of that, the Big
Three had taken an oath after World War II not to have any more kids. But
Thalia and I had been born anyway, and now we were both getting close to
sixteen.
I remembered a conversation I’d had last year with Annabeth. I’d asked her if
I was so potentially dangerous, why the gods didn’t just kill me.
Some of the gods would like to kill you, she’d said. But they’re afraid of
offending Poseidon.
Could an Olympian parent turn against his half-blood child? Would it
sometimes be easier just to let them die? If there were ever any half-bloods who
needed to worry about that, it was Thalia and me. I wondered if maybe I
should’ve sent Poseidon that seashell-pattern tie for Father’s Day after all.
‘There will be deaths,’ Chiron decided. ‘That much we know.’
‘Oh, goody!’ Dionysus said.
Everyone looked at him. He glanced up innocently from the pages of Wine
Connoisseur magazine. ‘Ah, Pinot Noir is making a comeback. Don’t mind me.’
‘Percy is right,’ Silena Beauregard said. ‘Two campers should go.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Zoë said sarcastically. ‘And I suppose you wish to volunteer?’
Silena blushed. ‘I’m not going anywhere with the Hunters. Don’t look at me!’
‘A daughter of Aphrodite does not wish to be looked at,’ Zoë scoffed. ‘What
would thy mother say?’
Silena started to get out of her chair, but the Stoll brothers pulled her back.
‘Stop it,’ Beckendorf said. He was a big guy with a bigger voice. He didn’t
talk much, but when he did people tended to listen. ‘Let’s start with the Hunters.
Which three of you will go?’
Zoë stood. ‘I shall go, of course, and I will take Phoebe. She is our best
tracker.’
‘The big girl who likes to hit people on the head?’ Travis Stoll asked
cautiously.
Zoë nodded.
‘The one who put the arrows in my helmet?’ Connor added.
‘Yes,’ Zoë snapped. ‘Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Travis said. ‘Just we have a T-shirt for her from the camp store.’
He held up a big silver T-shirt that said ARTEMIS THE MOON GODDESS,
HUNTING TOUR 2002, with a huge list of national parks and stuff underneath.
‘It’s a collector’s item. She was admiring it. You want to give it to her?’
I knew the Stolls were up to something. They always were. But I guess Zoë
didn’t know them as well as I did. She just sighed and took the T-shirt. ‘As I was
saying, I will take Phoebe. And I wish Bianca to go.’
Bianca looked stunned. ‘Me? But… I’m so new. I wouldn’t be any good.’
‘You will do fine,’ Zoë insisted. ‘There is no better way to prove thyself.’
Bianca closed her mouth. I felt kind of sorry for her. I remembered my first
quest when I was twelve. I had felt totally unprepared. A little honoured, maybe,
but a lot resentful and plenty scared. I figured the same things were running
around in Bianca’s head right now.
‘And for campers?’ Chiron asked. His eyes met mine, but I couldn’t tell what
he was thinking.
‘Me!’ Grover stood up so fast he bumped the ping-pong table. He brushed
cracker crumbs and ping-pong ball scraps off his lap. ‘Anything to help
Artemis!’
Zoë wrinkled her nose. ‘I think not, satyr. You are not even a half-blood.’
‘But he is a camper,’ Thalia said. ‘And he’s got a satyr’s senses and woodland
magic. Can you play a tracker’s song yet, Grover?’
‘Absolutely!’
Zoë wavered. I didn’t know what a tracker’s song was, but apparently Zoë
thought it was a good thing.
‘Very well,’ Zoë said. ‘And the second camper?’
‘I’ll go.’ Thalia stood and looked around, daring anyone to question her.
Now, okay, maybe my maths skills weren’t the best. But it suddenly occurred
to me that we’d reached the number five, and I wasn’t in the group.
‘Whoa, wait a sec,’ I said. ‘I want to go, too.’
Thalia said nothing. Chiron was still studying me, his eyes sad.
‘Oh,’ Grover said, suddenly aware of the problem. ‘Whoa, yeah, I forgot!
Percy has to go. I didn’t mean… I’ll stay. Percy should go in my place.’
‘He cannot,’ Zoë said. ‘He is a boy. I won’t have Hunters travelling with a
boy.’
‘You travelled here with me,’ I reminded her.
‘That was a short-term emergency, and it was ordered by the goddess. I will
not go across country and fight many dangers in the company of a boy.’
‘What about Grover?’ I demanded.
Zoë shook her head. ‘He does not count. He’s a satyr. He is not technically a
boy.’
‘Hey!’ Grover protested.
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I need to be on this quest.’
‘Why?’ Zoë asked. ‘Because of thy friend Annabeth?’
I felt myself blushing. I hated that everyone was looking at me. ‘No! I mean,
partly. I just feel like I’m supposed to go!’
Nobody rose to my defence. Mr D looked bored, still reading his magazine.
Silena, the Stoll brothers and Beckendorf were staring at the table. Bianca gave
me a look of pity.
‘No,’ Zoë said flatly. ‘I insist upon this. I will take a satyr if I must, but not a
male hero.’
Chiron sighed. ‘The quest is for Artemis. The Hunters should be allowed to
approve their companions.’
My ears were ringing as I sat down. I knew Grover and some of the others
were looking at me sympathetically, but I couldn’t meet their eyes. I just sat
there as Chiron concluded the council.
‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Thalia and Grover will accompany Zoë, Bianca and
Phoebe. You shall leave at first light. And may the gods –’ he glanced at
Dionysus – ‘present company included, we hope – be with you.’
I didn’t show up for dinner that night, which was a mistake, because Chiron and
Grover came looking for me.
‘Percy, I’m so sorry!’ Grover said, sitting next to me on the bunk. ‘I didn’t
know they’d – that you’d – Honest!’
He started to sniffle, and I figured if I didn’t cheer him up he’d either start
bawling or chewing up my mattress. He tends to eat inanimate objects whenever
he gets upset.
‘It’s okay,’ I lied. ‘Really. It’s fine.’
Grover’s lower lip trembled. ‘I wasn’t even thinking… I was so focused on
helping Artemis. But, I promise, I’ll look everywhere for Annabeth. If I can find
her, I will.’
I nodded and tried to ignore the big crater that was opening in my chest.
‘Grover,’ Chiron said, ‘perhaps you’d let me have a word with Percy?’
‘Sure,’ he sniffled.
Chiron waited.
‘Oh,’ Grover said. ‘You mean alone. Sure, Chiron,’ He looked at me
miserably. ‘See? Nobody needs a goat.’
He trotted out the door, blowing his nose on his sleeve.
Chiron sighed and knelt on his horse legs. ‘Percy, I don’t pretend to
understand prophecies.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, maybe that’s because they don’t make any sense.’
Chiron gazed at the saltwater spring gurgling in the corner of the room.
‘Thalia would not have been my first choice to go on this quest. She’s too
impetuous. She acts without thinking. She is too sure of herself.’
‘Would you have chosen me?’
‘Frankly, no,’ he said. ‘You and Thalia are much alike.’
‘Thanks a lot.’
He smiled. ‘The difference is that you are less sure of yourself than Thalia.
That could be good or bad. But one thing I can say: both of you together would
be a dangerous thing.’
‘We could handle it.’
‘The way you handled it at the creek tonight?’
I didn’t answer. He’d nailed me.
‘Perhaps it is for the best,’ Chiron mused. ‘You can go home to your mother
for the holidays. If we need you, we can call.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’
I pulled Riptide out of my pocket and set in on my nightstand. It didn’t seem
that I’d be using it for anything but writing Christmas cards.
When he saw the pen, Chiron grimaced. ‘It’s no wonder Zoë doesn’t want you
along, I suppose. Not while you’re carrying that particular weapon.’
I didn’t understand what he meant. Then I remembered something he’d told
me a long time ago, when he first gave me the magic sword: It has a long and
tragic history, which we need not go into.
I wanted to ask him about that, but then he pulled a golden drachma from his
saddlebag and tossed it to me. ‘Call your mother, Percy. Let her know you’re
coming home in the morning. And, ah, for what it’s worth… I almost
volunteered for this quest myself. I would have gone, if not for the last line.’
‘One shall perish by a parent’s hand. Yeah.’
I didn’t need to ask. I knew Chiron’s dad was Kronos, the evil Titan Lord
himself. The line would make perfect sense if Chiron went on the quest. Kronos
didn’t care for anyone, including his own children.
‘Chiron,’ I said. ‘You know what this Titan’s curse is, don’t you?’
His face darkened. He made a claw over his heart and pushed outwards – an
ancient gesture for warding off evil. ‘Let us hope the prophecy does not mean
what I think. Now, goodnight, Percy. And your time will come. I’m convinced of
that. There’s no need to rush.’
He said your time the way people did when they meant your death. I didn’t
know if Chiron meant it that way, but the look in his eyes made me scared to ask.
I stood at the saltwater spring, rubbing Chiron’s coin in my hand and trying to
figure out what to say to my mom. I really wasn’t in the mood to have one more
adult tell me that doing nothing was the greatest thing I could do, but I figured
my mom deserved an update.
Finally, I took a deep breath and threw in the coin. ‘O goddess, accept my
offering.’
The mist shimmered. The light from the bathroom was just enough to make a
faint rainbow.
‘Show me Sally Jackson,’ I said. ‘Upper East Side, Manhattan.’
And there in the mist was a scene I did not expect. My mom was sitting at our
kitchen table with some… guy. They were laughing hysterically. There was a big
stack of textbooks between them. The man was, I don’t know, thirty-something,
with longish salt-and-pepper hair and a brown jacket over a black T-shirt. He
looked like an actor – like a guy who might play an undercover cop on
television.
I was too stunned to say anything, and, fortunately, my mom and the guy were
too busy laughing to notice my Iris-message.
The guy said, ‘Sally, you’re a riot. You want some more wine?’
‘Ah, I shouldn’t. You go ahead if you want.’
‘Actually, I’d better use your bathroom. May I?’
‘Down the hall,’ she said, trying not to laugh.
The actor dude smiled and got up and left.
‘Mom!’ I said.
She jumped so hard she almost knocked her textbooks off the table. Finally
she focused on me. ‘Percy! Oh, honey! Is everything okay?’
‘What are you doing?’ I demanded.
She blinked. ‘Homework.’ Then she seemed to understand the look on my
face. ‘Oh, honey, that’s just Paul – um, Mr Blofis. He’s in my writing seminar.’
‘Mr Blowfish?’
‘Blofis. He’ll be back in a minute, Percy. Tell me what’s wrong.’
She always knew when something was wrong. I told her about Annabeth. The
other stuff, too, but mostly it boiled down to Annabeth.
My mother’s eyes teared up. I could tell she was trying hard to keep it
together for my sake. ‘Oh, Percy…’
‘Yeah. So they tell me there’s nothing I can do. I guess I’ll be coming home.’
She turned her pencil round in her fingers. ‘Percy, as much as I want you to
come home –’ she sighed like she was mad at herself – ‘as much as I want you to
be safe, I want you to understand something. You need to do whatever you think
you have to.’
I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, do you really, deep down, believe that you have to help save her? Do
you think it’s the right thing to do? Because I know one thing about you, Percy.
Your heart is always in the right place. Listen to it.’
‘You’re… you’re telling me to go?’
My mother pursed her lips. ‘I’m telling you that… you’re getting too old for
me to tell you what to do. I’m telling you that I’ll support you, even if what you
decide to do is dangerous. I can’t believe I’m saying this.’
‘Mom –’
The toilet flushed down the hall in our apartment.
‘I don’t have much time,’ my mom said. ‘Percy, whatever you decide, I love
you. And I know you’ll do what’s best for Annabeth.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because she’d do the same for you.’
And, with that, my mother waved her hand over the mist, and the connection
dissolved, leaving me with one final image of her new friend Mr Blowfish
smiling down at her.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but I remember the dream.
I was back in that barren cave, the ceiling heavy and low above me. Annabeth
was kneeling under the weight of a dark mass like a pile of boulders. She was
too tired even to cry out. Her legs trembled. Any second, I knew she would run
out of strength and the cavern ceiling would collapse on top of her.
‘How is our mortal guest?’ a male voice boomed.
It wasn’t Kronos. Kronos’s voice was raspy and metallic, like a knife scraped
across stone. I’d heard it taunting me many times before in my dreams. This
voice was deeper and lower, like a bass guitar. Its force made the ground vibrate.
Luke emerged from the shadows. He ran to Annabeth, knelt beside her, then
looked back at the unseen man. ‘She’s fading. We must hurry.’
The hypocrite. Like he really cared what happened to her.
The deep voice chuckled. It belonged to someone in the shadows, at the edge
of my dream. Then a meaty hand thrust someone forward into the light –
Artemis – her hands and feet bound in celestial bronze chains.
I gasped. Her silvery dress was torn and tattered. Her face and arms were cut
in several places, and she was bleeding ichor, the golden blood of the gods.
‘You heard the boy,’ said the man in the shadows. ‘Decide!’
Artemis’s eyes flashed with anger. I didn’t know why she just didn’t will the
chains to burst, or make herself disappear, but she didn’t seem able to. Maybe
the chains prevented her, or some magic about this dark, horrible place.
The goddess looked at Annabeth, and her expression changed to concern and
outrage. ‘How dare you torture a maiden like this!’
‘She will die soon,’ Luke said. ‘You can save her.’
Annabeth made a weak sound of protest. My heart felt like it was being
twisted into a knot. I wanted to run to her, but I couldn’t move.
‘Free my hands,’ Artemis said.
Luke brought out his sword, Backbiter. With one expert strike, he broke the
goddess’s handcuffs.
Artemis ran to Annabeth and took the burden from her shoulders. Annabeth
collapsed on the ground and lay there shivering. Artemis staggered, trying to
support the weight of the black rocks.
The man in the shadows chuckled. ‘You are as predictable as you were easy to
beat, Artemis.’
‘You surprised me,’ the goddess said, straining under her burden. ‘It will not
happen again.’
‘Indeed it will not,’ the man said. ‘Now you are out of the way for good! I
knew you could not resist helping a young maiden. That is, after all, your
speciality, my dear.’
Artemis groaned. ‘You know nothing of mercy, you swine.’
‘On that,’ the man said, ‘we can agree. Luke, you may kill the girl now.’
‘No!’ Artemis shouted.
Luke hesitated. ‘She – she may yet be useful, sir. Further bait.’
‘Bah! You truly believe that?’
‘Yes, General. They will come for her. I’m sure.’
The man considered. ‘Then the dracaenae can guard her here. Assuming she
does not die from her injuries, you may keep her alive until winter solstice. After
that, if our sacrifice goes as planned, her life will be meaningless. The lives of
all mortals will be meaningless.’
Luke gathered up Annabeth’s listless body and carried her away from the
goddess.
‘You will never find the monster you seek,’ Artemis said. ‘Your plan will fail.’
‘How little you know, my young goddess,’ the man in the shadows said. ‘Even
now, your darling attendants begin their quest to find you. They shall play
directly into my hands. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have a long journey to
make. We must greet your Hunters and make sure their quest is… challenging.’
The man’s laughter echoed in the darkness, shaking the ground until it seemed
the whole cavern ceiling would collapse.
I woke with a start. I was sure I’d heard a loud banging.
I looked around the cabin. It was dark outside. The salt spring still gurgled. No
other sounds but the hoot of an owl in the woods and the distant surf on the
beach. In the moonlight, on my nightstand, was Annabeth’s New York Yankees
cap. I stared at it for a second, and then: BANG. BANG.
Someone, or something, was pounding on my door.
I grabbed Riptide and got out of bed.
‘Hello?’ I called.
THUMP. THUMP.
I crept to the door.
I uncapped the blade, flung open the door, and found myself face to face with
a black pegasus.
Whoa, boss! Its voice spoke in my mind as it clopped away from the sword
blade. I don’t wanna be a horse-ke-bob!
Its black wings spread in alarm, and the wind buffeted me back a step.
‘Blackjack,’ I said, relieved but a little irritated. ‘It’s the middle of the night!’
Blackjack huffed. Ain’t either, boss. It’s five in the morning. What you still
sleeping for?
‘How many times have I told you? Don’t call me boss.’
Whatever you say, boss. You’re the man. You’re my number one.
I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and tried not to let the pegasus read my
thoughts. That’s the problem with being Poseidon’s son: since he created horses
out of sea foam, I can understand most equestrian animals, but they can
understand me, too. Sometimes, like in Blackjack’s case, they kind of adopt me.
See, Blackjack had been a captive on board Luke’s ship last summer, until
we’d caused a little distraction that allowed him to escape. I’d really had very
little to do with it, seriously, but Blackjack credited me with saving him.
‘Blackjack,’ I said, ‘you’re supposed to stay in the stables.’
Meh, the stables. You see Chiron staying in the stables?
‘Well… no.’
Exactly. Listen, we got another little sea friend needs your help.
‘Again?’
Yeah. I told the hippocampi I’d come get you.
I groaned. Anytime I was anywhere near the beach, the hippocampi would ask
me to help them with their problems. And they had a lot of problems. Beached
whales, porpoises caught in fishing nets, mermaids with hangnails – they’d call
me to come underwater and help.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m coming.’
You’re the best, boss.
‘And don’t call me boss!’
Blackjack whinnied softly. It might’ve been a laugh.
I looked back at my comfortable bed. My bronze shield still hung on the wall,
dented and unusable. And on my nightstand was Annabeth’s magic Yankees cap.
On an impulse, I stuck the cap in my pocket. I guess I had a feeling, even then,
that I wasn’t coming back to my cabin for a long, long time.
8
I Make A Dangerous Promise
Blackjack gave me a ride down the beach, and I have to admit it was cool. Being
on a flying horse, skimming over the waves at a hundred miles an hour with the
wind in my hair and the sea spray in my face – hey, it beats waterskiing any day.
Here. Blackjack slowed and turned in a circle. Straight down.
‘Thanks.’ I tumbled off his back and plunged into the icy sea.
I’d got more comfortable doing stunts like that the past couple of years. I
could pretty much move however I wanted to underwater, just by willing the
ocean currents to change around me and propel me along. I could breathe
underwater, no problem, and my clothes never got wet unless I wanted them to.
I shot down into the darkness.
Eight, ten, twelve metres. The pressure wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d never tried
to push it – to see if there was a limit to how deep I could dive. I knew most
regular humans couldn’t go past sixty-five metres without crumpling like a tin
can. I should’ve been blind, too, this deep in the water at night, but I could see
the heat from living forms, and the cold of the currents. It’s hard to describe. It
wasn’t like regular seeing, but I could tell where everything was.
As I got closer to the bottom, I saw three hippocampi – fish-tailed horses –
swimming in a circle round an overturned boat. The hippocampi were beautiful
to watch. Their fish tails shimmered in rainbow colours, glowing
phosphorescent. Their manes were white, and they were galloping through the
water the way nervous horses do in a thunderstorm. Something was upsetting
them.
I got closer and saw the problem. A dark shape – some kind of animal – was
wedged halfway under the boat and tangled in a fishing net, one of those big nets
they use on trawlers to catch everything at once. I hated those things. It was bad
enough they drowned porpoises and dolphins, but they also occasionally caught
mythological animals. When the nets got tangled, some lazy fishermen would
just cut them loose and let the trapped animals die.
Apparently this poor creature had been mucking around on the bottom of
Long Island Sound and had somehow got itself tangled in the net of this sunken
fishing boat. It had tried to get out and managed to get even more hopelessly
stuck, shifting the boat in the process. Now the wreckage of the hull, which was
resting against a big rock, was teetering and threatening to collapse on top of the
tangled animal.
The hippocampi were swimming around frantically, wanting to help but not
sure how. One was trying to chew the net, but hippocampi teeth just aren’t meant
for cutting rope. Hippocampi are really strong, but they don’t have hands, and
they’re not (shhh) all that smart.
Free it, lord! A hippocampus said when it saw me. The others joined in,
asking the same thing.
I swam in for a closer look at the tangled creature. At first I thought it was a
young hippocampus. I’d rescued several of them before. But then I heard a
strange sound, something that did not belong underwater:
‘Mooooooo!’
I got next to the thing and saw that it was a cow. I mean… I’d heard of sea
cows, like manatees and stuff, but this really was a cow with the back end of a
serpent. The front half was a calf – a baby, with black fur and big, sad brown
eyes and a white muzzle – and its back half was a black-and-brown snaky tail
with fins running down the top and bottom, like an enormous eel.
‘Whoa, little one,’ I said. ‘Where did you come from?’
The creature looked at me sadly. ‘Moooo!’
But I couldn’t understand its thoughts. I only speak horse.
We don’t know what it is, lord, one of the hippocampus said. Many strange
things are stirring.
‘Yeah,’ I murmured. ‘So I’ve heard.’
I uncapped Riptide, and the sword grew to full-length in my hands, its bronze
blade gleaming in the dark.
The cow serpent freaked out and started struggling against the net, its eyes full
of terror. ‘Whoa!’ I said. ‘I’m not going to hurt you! Just let me cut the net.’
But the cow serpent thrashed around and got even more tangled. The boat
started to tilt, stirring up the muck on the sea bottom and threatening to topple
onto the cow serpent. The hippocampi whinnied in a panic and thrashed in the
water, which didn’t help.
‘Okay, okay!’ I said. I put away the sword and started speaking as calmly as I
could so the hippocampi and the cow serpent would stop panicking. I didn’t
know if it was possible to get stampeded underwater, but I didn’t really want to
find out. ‘It’s cool. No sword. See? No sword. Calm thoughts. Sea grass. Mama
cows. Vegetarianism.’
I doubted the cow serpent understood what I was saying, but it responded to
the tone of my voice. The hippocampi were still skittish, but they stopped
swirling around me quite so fast.
Free it, lord! they pleaded.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I got that part. I’m thinking.’
But how could I free the cow serpent when she (I decided it was probably a
‘she’) panicked at the sight of a blade? It was like she’d seen swords before and
knew how dangerous they were.
‘All right,’ I told the hippocampi. ‘I need all of you to push exactly the way I
tell you.’
First we started with the boat. It wasn’t easy but, with the strength of three
horsepower, we managed to shift the wreckage so it was no longer threatening to
collapse on the baby cow serpent. Then I went to work on the net, untangling it
section by section, getting lead weights and fishing hooks straightened out,
yanking out knots round the cow serpent’s hooves. It took forever – I mean, it
was worse than the time I’d had to untangle all my video game controller wires.
The whole time, I kept talking to the cow fish, telling her everything was okay
while she mooed and moaned.
‘It’s okay, Bessie,’ I said. Don’t ask me why I started calling her that. It just
seemed like a good cow name. ‘Good cow. Nice cow.’
Finally, the net came off and the cow serpent zipped through the water and did
a happy somersault.
The hippocampi whinnied with joy. Thank you, lord!
‘Moooo!’ The cow serpent nuzzled me and gave me the big brown eyes.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s okay. Nice cow. Well… stay out of trouble.’
Which reminded me, I’d been underwater how long? An hour, at least. I had
to get back to my cabin before Argus or the harpies discovered I was breaking
curfew.
I shot to the surface and broke through. Immediately, Blackjack zoomed down
and let me catch hold of his neck. He lifted me into the air and took me back
towards the shore.
Success, boss?
‘Yeah. We rescued a baby… something or other. Took forever. Almost got
stampeded.’
Good deeds are always dangerous, boss. You saved my sorry mane, didn’t
you?
I couldn’t help thinking about Annabeth in my dream, crumpled and lifeless in
Luke’s arms. Here I was rescuing baby monsters, but I couldn’t save my friend.
As Blackjack flew back towards my cabin, I happened to glance at the dining
pavilion. I saw a figure – a boy hunkered down behind a Greek column, like he
was hiding from someone.
It was Nico, but it wasn’t even dawn yet. Nowhere near time for breakfast.
What was he doing up there?
I hesitated. The last thing I wanted was more time for Nico to tell me about
his Mythomagic game. But something was wrong. I could tell by the way he was
crouching.
‘Blackjack,’ I said, ‘set me down over there, will you? Behind that column.’
I almost blew it.
I was coming up the steps behind Nico. He didn’t see me at all. He was behind
a column, peeking round the corner, all his attention focused on the dining area. I
was two metres away from him, and I was about to say What are you doing,
really loud, when it occurred to me that he was pulling a Grover: he was spying
on the Hunters.
There were voices – two girls talking at one of the dining tables. At this
ungodly hour of the morning? Well, unless you’re the goddess of dawn, I guess.
I took Annabeth’s cap out of my pocket and put it on.
I didn’t feel any different, but when I raised my arms I couldn’t see them. I
was invisible.
I crept up to Nico and sneaked round him. I couldn’t see the girls very well in
the dark, but I knew their voices: Zoë and Bianca. It sounded like they were
arguing.
‘It cannot be cured,’ Zoë was saying. ‘Not quickly, at any rate.’
‘But how did it happen?’ Bianca asked.
‘A foolish prank,’ Zoë growled. ‘Those Stoll boys from the Hermes cabin.
Centaur blood is like acid. Everyone knows that. They sprayed the inside of that
Artemis Hunting Tour T-shirt with it.’
‘That’s terrible!’
‘She will live,’ Zoë said. ‘But she’ll be bedridden for weeks with horrible
hives. There is no way she can go. It’s up to me… and thee.’
‘But the prophecy,’ Bianca said. ‘If Phoebe can’t go, we only have four. We’ll
have to pick another.’
‘There is no time,’ Zoë said. ‘We must leave at first light. That’s immediately.
Besides, the prophecy said we would lose one.’
‘In the land without rain,’ Bianca said, ‘but that can’t be here.’
‘It might be,’ Zoë said, though she didn’t sound convinced. ‘The camp has
magic borders. Nothing, not even weather, is allowed in without permission. It
could be a land without rain.’
‘But –’
‘Bianca, hear me.’ Zoë’s voice was strained. ‘I… I can’t explain, but I have a
sense that we should not pick someone else. It would be too dangerous. They
would meet an end worse than Phoebe’s. I don’t want Chiron choosing a camper
as our fifth companion. And… I don’t want to risk another Hunter.’
Bianca was silent. ‘You should tell Thalia the rest of your dream.’
‘No. It would not help.’
‘But if your suspicions are correct, about the General –’
‘I have thy word not to talk about that,’ Zoë said. She sounded really
anguished. ‘We will find out soon enough. Now come. Dawn is breaking.’
Nico scooted out of their way. He was faster than me.
As the girls sprinted down the steps, Zoë almost ran into me. She froze, her
eyes narrowing. Her hand crept towards her bow, but then Bianca said, ‘The
lights of the Big House are on. Hurry!’
And Zoë followed her out of the pavilion.
I could tell what Nico was thinking. He took a deep breath and was about to run
after his sister when I took off the invisibility cap and said, ‘Wait.’
He almost slipped on the icy steps as he spun round to find me. ‘Where did
you come from?’
‘I’ve been here the whole time. Invisible.’
He mouthed the word invisible. ‘Wow. Cool.’
‘How did you know Zoë and your sister were here?’
He blushed. ‘I heard them walk by the Hermes cabin. I don’t… I don’t sleep
too well at camp. So I heard footsteps, and them whispering. And so I kind of
followed.’
‘And now you’re thinking about following them on the quest,’ I guessed.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Because if it was my sister, I’d probably be thinking the same thing. But you
can’t.’
He looked defiant. ‘Because I’m too young?’
‘Because they won’t let you. They’ll catch you and send you back here.
And… yeah, because you’re too young. You remember the manticore? There
will be lots more like that. More dangerous. Some of the heroes will die.’
His shoulders sagged. He shifted from foot to foot. ‘Maybe you’re right. But,
but you can go for me.’
‘Say what?’
‘You can turn invisible. You can go!’
‘The Hunters don’t like boys,’ I reminded him. ‘If they find out –’
‘Don’t let them find out. Follow them invisibly. Keep an eye on my sister!
You have to. Please?’
‘Nico –’
‘You’re planning to go anyway, aren’t you?’
I wanted to say no. But he looked me in the eyes, and I somehow couldn’t lie
to him.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I have to find Annabeth. I have to help, even if they don’t want
me to.’
‘I won’t tell on you,’ he said. ‘But you have to promise to keep my sister safe.’
‘I… that’s a big thing to promise, Nico, on a trip like this. Besides, she’s got
Zoë, Grover and Thalia –’
‘Promise,’ he insisted.
‘I’ll do my best. I promise that.’
‘Get going, then!’ he said. ‘Good luck!’
It was crazy. I wasn’t packed. I had nothing but the cap and the sword and the
clothes I was wearing. I was supposed to be going home to Manhattan this
morning. ‘Tell Chiron –’
‘I’ll make something up.’ Nico smiled crookedly. ‘I’m good at that. Go on!’
I ran, putting on Annabeth’s cap. As the sun came up, I turned invisible. I hit
the top of Half-Blood Hill in time to see the camp’s van disappearing down the
farm road, probably Argus taking the quest group into the city. After that they
would be on their own.
I felt a twinge of guilt, and stupidity, too. How was I supposed to keep up with
them. Run?
Then I heard the beating of huge wings. Blackjack landed next to me. He
began casually nuzzling a few tufts of grass that stuck through the ice.
If I was guessing, boss, I’d say you need a getaway horse. You interested?
A lump of gratitude stuck in my throat, but I managed to say, ‘Yeah. Let’s fly.’
9
I Learn How To Grow Zombies
The thing about flying on a pegasus during the daytime is that, if you’re not
careful, you can cause a serious traffic accident on the Long Island Expressway.
I had to keep Blackjack up in the clouds, which were fortunately pretty low in
the winter. We darted around, trying to keep the white Camp Half-Blood van in
sight. And if it was cold on the ground, it was seriously cold in the air, with icy
rain stinging my skin.
I was wishing I’d brought some of that Camp Half-Blood orange thermal
underwear they sold in the camp store but, after the story about Phoebe and the
centaur-blood T-shirt, I wasn’t sure I trusted their products any more.
We lost the van twice, but I had a pretty good sense that they would go into
Manhattan first, so it wasn’t too difficult to pick up their trail again.
Traffic was bad with the holidays and all. It was mid morning before they got
into the city. I landed Blackjack near the top of the Chrysler Building and
watched the white camp van, thinking it would pull into the Greyhound station,
but it just kept driving.
‘Where’s Argus taking them?’ I muttered.
Oh, Argus ain’t driving, boss, Blackjack told me. That girl is.
‘Which girl?’
The Hunter girl. With the silver crown thing in her hair.
‘Zoë?’
That’s the one. Hey, look! There’s a doughnut shop. Can we hit the drive-thru?
I tried explaining to Blackjack that taking a flying horse through the drive-thru
would give every cop in the doughnut shop a heart attack, but he didn’t seem to
get it. Meanwhile, the van kept snaking its way towards the Lincoln Tunnel. It
had never even occurred to me that Zoë could drive. I mean, she didn’t look
sixteen. Then again, she was immortal. I wondered if she had a New York
licence and, if so, what her birth date said.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Let’s get after them.’
We were about to leap off the Chrysler Building when Blackjack whinnied in
alarm and almost threw me. Something was curling around my leg like a snake. I
reached for my sword, but when I looked down, there was no snake. Vines –
grapevines – had sprouted from the cracks between the stones of the building.
They were wrapping round Blackjack’s legs, lashing down my ankles so we
couldn’t move.
‘Going somewhere?’ Mr D asked.
He was leaning against the building with his feet levitating in the air, his
leopard-skin warm-up suit and black hair whipping around in the wind.
God alert! Blackjack yelled. It’s the wine dude!
Mr D sighed in exasperation. ‘The next person, or horse, who calls me “the
wine dude” will end up in a bottle of Merlot!’
‘Mr D.’ I tried to keep my voice calm as the grapevines continued to wrap
round my legs. ‘What do you want?’
‘Oh, what do I want? You thought, perhaps, that the immortal, all-powerful
director of camp would not notice you leaving without permission?’
‘Well… maybe.’
‘I should throw you off this building, minus the flying horse, and see how
heroic you sound on the way down.’
I balled my fists. I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but Mr D was about to
kill me or haul me back to camp in shame, and I couldn’t stand either idea. ‘Why
do you hate me so much? What did I ever do to you?’
Purple flames flickered in his eyes. ‘You’re a hero, boy. I need no other
reason.’
‘I have to go on this quest! I’ve got to help my friends. That’s something you
wouldn’t understand!’
Um, boss, Blackjack said nervously. Seeing as how we’re wrapped in vines
three hundred metres in the air, you might want to talk nice.
The grapevines coiled tighter round me. Below us, the white van was getting
further and further away. Soon it would be out of sight.
‘Did I ever tell you about Ariadne?’ Mr D asked. ‘Beautiful young princess of
Crete? She liked helping her friends, too. In fact, she helped a young hero named
Theseus, also a son of Poseidon. She gave him a ball of magical thread that let
him find his way out of the Labyrinth. And do you know how Theseus rewarded
her?’
The answer I wanted to give was I don’t care! But I didn’t figure that would
make Mr D finish his story any faster.
‘They got married,’ I said. ‘Happily ever after. The end.’
Mr D sneered. ‘Not quite. Theseus said he would marry her. He took her
aboard his ship and sailed for Athens. Halfway back, on a little island called
Naxos, he – what’s the word you mortals use today? – he dumped her. I found
her there, you know. Alone. Heartbroken. Crying her eyes out. She had given up
everything, left everything she knew behind, to help a dashing young hero who
tossed her away like a broken sandal.’
‘That’s wrong,’ I said. ‘But that was thousands of years ago. What’s that got to
do with me?’
Mr D regarded me coldly. ‘I fell in love with Ariadne, boy. I healed her
broken heart. And, when she died, I made her my immortal wife in Olympus.
She waits for me even now. I shall go back to her when I am done with this
infernal century of punishment at your ridiculous camp.’
I stared at him. ‘You’re… you’re married? But I thought you got in trouble for
chasing a wood nymph –’
‘My point is you heroes never change. You accuse us gods of being vain. You
should look at yourselves. You take what you want, use whoever you have to,
and then you betray everyone around you. So you’ll excuse me if I have no love
for heroes. They are a selfish, ungrateful lot. Ask Ariadne. Or Medea. For that
matter, ask Zoë Nightshade.’
‘What do you mean, ask Zoë?’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘Go. Follow your silly friends.’
The vines uncurled from round my legs.
I blinked in disbelief. ‘You’re… you’re letting me go? Just like that?’
‘The prophecy says at least two of you will die. Perhaps I’ll get lucky and
you’ll be one of them. But mark my words, Son of Poseidon, live or die, you will
prove no better than the other heroes.’
With that, Dionysus snapped his fingers. His image folded up like a paper
display. There was a pop and he was gone, leaving a faint scent of grapes that
was quickly blown away by the wind.
Too close, Blackjack said.
I nodded, though I almost would have been less worried if Mr D had hauled
me back to camp. The fact that he’d let me go meant he really believed we stood
a fair chance of crashing and burning on this quest.
‘Come on, Blackjack,’ I said, trying to sound upbeat. ‘I’ll buy you some
doughnuts in New Jersey.’
As it turned out, I didn’t buy Blackjack doughnuts in New Jersey. Zoë drove
south like a crazy person, and we were into Maryland before she finally pulled
over at a service station. Blackjack nearly tumbled out of the sky, he was so
tired.
I’ll be okay, boss, he panted. Just… just catching my breath.
‘Stay here,’ I told him. ‘I’m going to scout.’
‘Stay here’ I can handle. I can do that.
I put on my cap of invisibility and walked over to the convenience store. It
was difficult not to sneak. I had to keep reminding myself that nobody could see
me. It was hard, too, because I had to remember to get out of people’s way so
they wouldn’t slam into me.
I thought I’d go inside and warm up, maybe get a cup of hot chocolate or
something. I had a little change in my pocket. I could leave it on the counter. I
was wondering if the cup would turn invisible when I picked it up, or if I’d have
to deal with a floating hot chocolate problem, when my whole plan was ruined
by Zoë, Thalia, Bianca and Grover all coming out of the store.
‘Grover, are you sure?’ Thalia was saying.
‘Well… pretty sure. Ninety-nine per cent. Okay, eighty-five per cent.’
‘And you did this with acorns?’ Bianca asked, like she couldn’t believe it.
Grover looked offended. ‘It’s a time-honoured tracking spell. I mean, I’m
pretty sure I did it right.’
‘D.C. is about sixty miles from here,’ Bianca said. ‘Nico and I…’ She
frowned. ‘We used to lived there. That’s… that’s strange. I’d forgotten.’
‘I dislike this,’ Zoë said. ‘We should go straight west. The prophecy said
west.’
‘Oh, like your tracking skills are better?’ Thalia growled.
Zoë stepped towards her. ‘You challenge my skills, you scullion? You know
nothing of being a Hunter!’
‘Oh, scullion? You’re calling me a scullion? What the heck is a scullion?’
‘Whoa, you two,’ Grover said nervously. ‘Come on. Not again!’
‘Grover’s right,’ Bianca said. ‘D.C. is our best bet.’
Zoë didn’t look convinced, but she nodded reluctantly. ‘Very well. Let us keep
moving.’
‘You’re going to get us arrested, driving,’ Thalia grumbled. ‘I look closer to
sixteen than you do.’
‘Perhaps,’ Zoë snapped. ‘But I have been driving since automobiles were
invented. Let us go.’
As Blackjack and I continued south, following the van, I wondered whether Zoë
had been kidding. I didn’t know exactly when cars were invented, but I figured
that was like prehistoric times – back when people watched black-and-white TV
and hunted dinosaurs.
How old was Zoë? And what had Mr D been talking about? What bad
experience had she had with heroes?
As we got closer to Washington, Blackjack started slowing down and
dropping altitude. He was breathing heavily.
‘You okay?’ I asked him.
Fine, boss. I could… I could take on an army.
‘You don’t sound so good.’ And suddenly I felt guilty, because I’d been
running the pegasus for half a day, nonstop, trying to keep up with highway
traffic. Even for a flying horse, that had to be rough.
Don’t worry about me, boss! I’m a tough one.
I figured he was right, but I also figured Blackjack would run himself into the
ground before he complained, and I didn’t want that.
Fortunately, the van started to slow down. It crossed the Potomac River into
central Washington. I started thinking about air patrols and missiles and stuff like
that. I didn’t know exactly how all those defences worked, and wasn’t sure if
pegasi even showed up on your typical military radar, but I didn’t want to find
out by getting shot out of the sky.
‘Set me down there,’ I told Blackjack. ‘That’s close enough.’
Blackjack was so tired he didn’t complain. He dropped towards the
Washington Monument and set me on the grass.
The van was only a few blocks away. Zoë had parked at the kerb.
I looked at Blackjack. ‘I want you to go back to camp. Get some rest. Graze.
I’ll be fine.’
Blackjack cocked his head sceptically. You sure, boss?
‘You’ve done enough already,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine. And thanks a ton.’
A ton of hay, maybe, Blackjack mused. That sounds good. All right, but be
careful, boss. I got a feeling they didn’t come here to meet anything friendly and
handsome like me.
I promised to be careful. Then Blackjack took off, circling twice round the
monument before disappearing into the clouds.
I looked over at the white van. Everybody was getting out. Grover pointed
towards one of the big buildings lining the mall. Thalia nodded, and the four of
them trudged off into the cold wind.
I started to follow. But then I froze.
A block away, the door of a black sedan opened. A man with a grey military
haircut got out. He was wearing dark shades and a black overcoat. Now, maybe
in Washington, you’d expected guys like that to be everywhere. But it dawned
on me that I’d seen this same car a couple of times on the highway, going south.
It had been following the van.
The guy took out his cell phone and said something into it. Then he looked
around, like he was making sure the coast was clear, and started walking down
the mall in the direction of my friends.
The worst of it was: when he turned towards me, I recognized his face. It was
Dr Thorn, the manticore from Westover Hall.
Invisibility cap on, I followed Thorn from a distance. My heart was pounding. If
he had survived that fall from the cliff, then Annabeth must have too. My dreams
had been right. She was alive and being held prisoner.
Thorn kept well back from my friends, careful not to be seen.
Finally, Grover stopped in front of a big building that said AIR AND SPACE
MUSEUM. The Smithsonian! I’d been here a million years ago with my mom,
but everything had looked so much bigger then.
Thalia checked the door. It was open, but there weren’t many people going in.
Too cold, and it was school holidays. They slipped inside.
Dr Thorn hesitated. I wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t go into the museum. He
turned and headed across the mall. I made a split-second decision and followed
him.
Thorn crossed the street and climbed the steps of the Museum of Natural
History. There was a big sign on the door. At first I thought it said CLOSED
FOR PIRATE EVENT. Then I realized PIRATE must be PRIVATE.
I followed Dr Thorn inside, through a huge chamber full of mastodons and
dinosaur skeletons. There were voices up ahead, coming from behind a set of
closed doors. Two guards stood outside. They opened the doors for Thorn, and I
had to sprint to get inside before they closed them again.
Inside, what I saw was so terrible I almost gasped out loud, which probably
would’ve got me killed.
I was in a huge round room with a balcony ringing the second level. At least a
dozen mortal guards stood on the balcony, plus two monsters – reptilian women
with double-snake trunks instead of legs. I’d seen them before. Annabeth had
called them Scythian dracaenae.
But that wasn’t the worse of it. Standing between the snake women – I could
swear he was looking straight down at me – was my old enemy Luke. He looked
terrible. His skin was pale and his blond hair looked almost grey, as if he’d aged
ten years in just a few months. The angry light in his eyes was still there, and so
was the scar down the side of his face, where a dragon had once scratched him.
But the scar was now ugly red, as though it had recently been reopened.
Next to him, sitting down so that the shadows covered him, was another man.
All I could see were his knuckles on the gilded arms of the chair, like a throne.
‘Well?’ asked the man in the chair. His voice was just like the one I’d heard in
my dream – not as creepy as Kronos’s, but deeper and stronger, like the earth
itself was talking. It filled the whole room even though he wasn’t yelling.
Dr Thorn took off his shades. His two-coloured eyes, brown and blue,
glittered with excitement. He made a stiff bow, then spoke in his weird French
accent: ‘They are here, General.’
‘I know that, you fool,’ boomed the man. ‘But where?’
‘In the rocket museum.’
‘The Air and Space Museum,’ Luke corrected irritably.
Dr Thorn glared at Luke. ‘As you say, sir.’
I got the feeling Thorn would just as soon impale Luke with one of his spikes
as call him sir.
‘How many?’ Luke asked.
Thorn pretended not to hear.
‘How many?’ the General demanded.
‘Four, General,’ Thorn said. ‘The satyr, Grover Underwood. And the girl with
the spiky black hair and the – how do you say – punk clothes, and the horrible
shield.’
‘Thalia,’ Luke said.
‘And two other girls – Hunters. One wears a silver circlet.’
‘That one I know,’ the General growled.
Everyone in the room shifted uncomfortably.
‘Let me take them,’ Luke said to the General. ‘We have more than enough –’
‘Patience,’ the General said. ‘They’ll have their hands full already. I’ve sent a
little playmate to keep them occupied.’
‘But –’
‘We cannot risk you, my boy.’
‘Yes, boy,’ Dr Thorn said with a cruel smile. ‘You are much too fragile to risk.
Let me finish them off.’
‘No.’ The General rose from his chair, and I got my first look at him.
He was tall and muscular, with light brown skin and slicked-back dark hair.
He wore an expensive brown silk suit like the guys on Wall Street wear, but
you’d never mistake this dude for a broker. He had a brutal face, huge shoulders,
and hands that could snap a flagpole in half. His eyes were like stone. I felt as if
I were looking at a living statue. It was amazing he could even move.
‘You have already failed me, Thorn,’ he said.
‘But, General –’
‘No excuses!’
Thorn flinched. I’d thought Thorn was scary when I first saw him in his black
uniform at the military academy. But now, standing before the General, Thorn
looked like a silly wannabe soldier. The General was the real deal. He didn’t
need a uniform. He was a born commander.
‘I should throw you into the pits of Tartarus for your incompetence,’ the
General said. ‘I send you to capture a child of the three elder gods, and you bring
me a scrawny daughter of Athena.’
‘But you promised me revenge!’ Thorn protested. ‘A command of my own!’
‘I am Lord Kronos’s senior commander,’ the General said. ‘And I will choose
lieutenants who get me results! It was only thanks to Luke that we salvaged our
plan at all. Now get out of my sight, Thorn, until I find some other menial task
for you.’
Thorn’s face turned purple with rage. I thought he was going to start frothing
at the mouth or shooting spines, but he just bowed awkwardly and left the room.
‘Now, my boy.’ The General turned to Luke. ‘The first thing we must do is
isolate the half-blood Thalia. The monster we seek will then come to her.’
‘The Hunters will be difficult to dispose of,’ Luke said. ‘Zoë Nightshade –’
‘Do not speak her name!’
Luke swallowed. ‘S-sorry, General. I just –’
The General silenced him with a wave of his hand. ‘Let me show you, my
boy, how we will bring the Hunters down.’
He pointed to a guard on the ground level. ‘Do you have the teeth?’
The guy stumbled forward with a ceramic pot. ‘Yes, General!’
‘Plant them,’ he said.
In the centre of the room was a big circle of dirt, where I guess a dinosaur
exhibit was supposed to go. I watched nervously as the guard took sharp white
teeth out of the pot and pushed them into the soil. He smoothed them over while
the General smiled coldly.
The guard stepped back from the dirt and wiped his hands. ‘Ready, General!’
‘Excellent! Water them, and we will let them scent their prey.’
The guard picked up a little tin watering can with daisies painted on it, which
was kind of bizarre, because what he poured out wasn’t water. It was dark red
liquid, and I got the feeling it wasn’t Hawaiian Punch.
The soil began to bubble.
‘Soon,’ the General said, ‘I will show you, Luke, soldiers that will make your
army from that little boat look insignificant.’
Luke clenched his fists. ‘I’ve spent a year training my forces! When the
Princess Andromeda arrives at the mountain, they’ll be the best –’
‘Ha!’ the General said. ‘I don’t deny your troops will make a fine honour
guard for Lord Kronos. And you, of course, will have a role to play –’
I thought Luke turned paler when the General said that.
‘– but under my leadership, the forces of Lord Kronos will increase a
hundredfold. We will be unstoppable. Behold, my ultimate killing machines.’
The soil erupted. I stepped back nervously.
In each spot where a tooth had been planted, a creature was struggling out of
the dirt. The first of them said:
‘Mew?’
It was a kitten. A little orange tabby with stripes like a tiger. Then another
appeared, until there were a dozen, rolling around and playing in the dirt.
Everyone stared at them in disbelief. The General roared, ‘What is this? Cute
cuddly kittens? Where did you find those teeth?’
The guard who’d brought the teeth cowered in fear. ‘From the exhibit, sir! Just
like you said. The saber-toothed tiger –’
‘No, you idiot! I said the tyrannosaurus! Gather up those… those infernal
fuzzy little beasts and take them outside. And never let me see your face again.’
The terrified guard dropped his watering can. He gathered up the kittens and
scampered out of the room.
‘You!’ The General pointed to another guard. ‘Get me the right teeth. NOW!’
The new guard ran off to carry out his orders.
‘Imbeciles,’ muttered the General.
‘This is why I don’t use mortals,’ Luke said. ‘They are unreliable.’
‘They are weak-minded, easily bought and violent,’ the General said. ‘I love
them.’
A minute later, the guard hustled into the room with his hands full of large
pointy teeth.
‘Excellent,’ the General said. He climbed onto the balcony railing and jumped
down, six metres.
Where he landed, the marble floor cracked under his leather shoes. He stood,
wincing, and rubbed his shoulders. ‘Curse my stiff neck.’
‘Another hot pad, sir?’ a guard asked. ‘More Tylenol?’
‘No! It will pass.’ The General brushed off his silk suit, then snatched up the
teeth. ‘I shall do this myself.’
He held up one of the teeth and smiled. ‘Dinosaur teeth – ha! Those foolish
mortals don’t even know when they have dragon teeth in their possession. And
not just any dragon teeth. These come from the ancient Sybaris herself! They
shall do nicely.’
He planted them in the dirt, twelve in all. Then he scooped up the watering
can. He sprinkled the soil with red liquid, tossed the can away, and held his arms
out wide. ‘Rise!’
The dirt trembled. A single, skeletal hand shot out of the ground, grasping at
the air.
The General looked up at the balcony. ‘Quickly, do you have the scent?’
‘Yesssss, lord,’ one of the snake ladies said. She took out a sash of silvery
fabric, like the kind the Hunters wore.
‘Excellent,’ the General said. ‘Once my warriors catch its scent, they will
pursue its owner relentlessly. Nothing can stop them, no weapons known to halfblood or Hunter. They will tear the Hunters and their allies to shreds. Toss it
here!’
As he said that, skeletons erupted from the ground. There were twelve of
them, one for each tooth the General had planted. They were nothing like
Halloween skeletons, or the kind you might see in cheesy movies. These were
growing flesh as I watched, turning into men, but men with dull grey skin,
yellow eyes and modern clothes – skintight grey vests, camo trousers and
combat boots. If you didn’t look too closely, you could almost believe they were
human, but their flesh was transparent and their bones shimmered underneath,
like X-ray images.
One of them looked straight at me, regarding me coldly, and I knew that no
cap of invisibility would fool it.
The snake lady released the scarf and it fluttered down towards the General’s
hand. As soon as he gave it to the warriors, they would hunt Zoë and the other
Hunters until they were extinct.
I didn’t have time to think. I ran and jumped with all my might, ploughing into
the warriors and snatching the scarf out of the air.
‘What’s this?’ bellowed the General.
I landed at the feet of a skeleton warrior, who hissed.
‘An intruder,’ the General growled. ‘One cloaked in darkness. Seal the doors!’
‘It’s Percy Jackson!’ Luke yelled. ‘It has to be.’
I sprinted for the exit, but heard a ripping sound and realized the skeleton
warrior had taken a chunk out of my sleeve. When I glanced back, he was
holding the fabric up to his nose, sniffing the scent, handing it around to his
friends. I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I squeezed through the door just as the
guards slammed it shut behind me.
And then I ran.
10
I Break A Few Rocket Ships
I tore across the mall, not daring to look behind me. I burst into the Air and
Space Museum and took off my invisibility cap once I was through the
admissions area.
The main part of the museum was one huge room with rockets and aeroplanes
hanging from the ceiling. Three levels of balconies curled round, so you could
look at the exhibits from all different heights. The place wasn’t crowded, just a
few families and a couple of tour groups of kids, probably doing one of those
holiday school trips. I wanted to yell at them all to leave, but I figured that would
only get me arrested. I had to find Thalia and Grover and the Hunters. Any
minute, the skeleton dudes were going to invade the museum, and I didn’t think
they would settle for an audio tour.
I ran into Thalia – literally. I was barrelling up the ramp to the top-floor
balcony and slammed into her, knocking her into an Apollo space capsule.
Grover yelped in surprise.
Before I could regain my balance, Zoë and Bianca had arrows notched, aimed
at my chest. Their bows had just appeared out of nowhere.
When Zoë realized who I was, she didn’t seem anxious to lower her bow.
‘You! How dare you show thy face here?’
‘Percy!’ Grover said. ‘Thank goodness.’
Zoë glared at him, and he blushed. ‘I mean, um, gosh. You’re not supposed to
be here!’
‘Luke,’ I said, trying to catch my breath. ‘He’s here.’
The anger in Thalia’s eyes immediately melted. She put her hand on her silver
bracelet. ‘Where?’
I told them about the Natural History Museum, Dr Thorn, Luke and the
General.
‘The General is here?’ Zoë looked stunned. ‘That is impossible! You lie.’
‘Why would I lie? Look, there’s no time. Skeleton warriors –’
‘What?’ Thalia demanded. ‘How many?’
‘Twelve,’ I said. ‘And that’s not all. That guy, the General, he said he was
sending something, a “playmate”, to distract you over here. A monster.’
Thalia and Grover exchanged looks.
‘We were following Artemis’s trail,’ Grover said. ‘I was pretty sure it led here.
Some powerful monster scent… She must’ve stopped here looking for the
mystery monster. But we haven’t found anything yet.’
‘Zoë,’ Bianca said nervously, ‘if it is the General –’
‘It cannot be!’ Zoë snapped. ‘Percy must have seen an Iris-message or some
other illusion.’
‘Illusions don’t crack marble floors,’ I told her.
Zoë took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. I didn’t know why she was
taking it so personally, or how she knew this General guy, but I figured now
wasn’t the time to ask.
‘If Percy is telling the truth about the skeleton warriors,’ she said, ‘we have no
time to argue. They are the worst, the most horrible… We must leave now.’
‘Good idea,’ I said.
‘I was not including thee, boy,’ Zoë said. ‘You are not part of this quest.’
‘Hey, I’m trying to save your lives!’
‘You shouldn’t have come, Percy,’ Thalia said grimly. ‘But you’re here now.
Come on. Let’s get back to the van.’
‘That is not thy decision!’ Zoë snapped.
Thalia scowled at her. ‘You’re not the boss here, Zoë. I don’t care how old you
are! You’re still a conceited little brat!’
‘You never had any wisdom when it came to boys,’ Zoë growled. ‘You never
could leave them behind!’
Thalia looked like she was about to hit Zoë. Then everyone froze. I heard a
growl so loud I thought one of the rocket engines was starting up.
Below us, a few adults screamed. A little kid’s voice screeched with delight:
‘Kitty!’
Something enormous bounded up the ramp. It was the size of a pick-up truck,
with silver claws and golden glittering fur. I’d seen this monster once before.
Two years ago, I’d glimpsed it briefly from a train. Now, up close and personal,
it looked even bigger.
‘The Nemean Lion,’ Thalia said. ‘Don’t move.’
The lion roared so loudly he parted my hair. His fangs gleamed like stainless
steel.
‘Separate on my mark,’ Zoë said. ‘Try to keep it distracted.’
‘Until when?’ Grover asked.
‘Until I think of a way to kill it. Go!’
I uncapped Riptide and rolled to the left. Arrows whistled past me, and Grover
played a sharp tweet-tweet cadence on his reed pipes. I turned and saw Zoë and
Bianca climbing the Apollo capsule. They were firing arrows, one after another,
all shattering harmlessly against the lion’s metallic fur. The lion swiped the
capsule and tipped it on its side, spilling the Hunters off the back. Grover played
a frantic, horrible tune, and the lion turned towards him, but Thalia stepped into
its path, holding up Aegis, and the lion recoiled. ‘ROOOAAAR!’
‘Hi-yah!’ Thalia said. ‘Back!’
The lion growled and clawed the air, but it retreated as if the shield were a
blazing fire.
For a second, I thought Thalia had it under control. Then I saw the lion
crouching, its leg muscles tensing. I’d seen enough cat fights in the alleys around
my apartment in New York. I knew the lion was going to pounce.
‘Hey!’ I yelled. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I charged the beast. I
just wanted to get it away from my friends. I slashed with Riptide, a good strike
to the flank that should’ve cut the monster into Meow Mix, but the blade just
clanged against its fur in a burst of sparks.
The lion raked me with its claws, ripping off a chunk of my coat. I backed
against the railing. It sprang at me, half a ton of monster, and I had no choice but
to turn and jump.
I landed on the wing of an old-fashioned silver aeroplane, which pitched and
almost spilled me to the floor, three stories below.
An arrow whizzed past my head. The lion jumped onto the aeroplane, and the
cords holding it began to groan.
The lion swiped at me, and I dropped onto the next exhibit, a weird-looking
spacecraft with blades like a helicopter. I looked up and saw the lion roar –
inside its maw, a pink tongue and throat.
Its mouth, I thought. Its fur was completely invulnerable, but if I could strike
it in the mouth… The only problem was the monster moved too quickly.
Between its claws and fangs, I couldn’t get close without getting sliced to pieces.
‘Zoë!’ I shouted. ‘Target the mouth!’
The monster lunged. An arrow zipped past it, missing completely, and I
dropped from the spaceship onto the top of a floor exhibit, a huge model of the
earth. I slid down Russia and dropped off the equator.
The Nemean Lion growled and steadied itself on the spacecraft, but its weight
was too much. One of the cords snapped. As the display swung down like a
pendulum, the lion leaped off onto the model earth’s North Pole.
‘Grover!’ I yelled. ‘Clear the area!’
Groups of kids were running around screaming. Grover tried to corral them
away from the monster just as the other cord on the spaceship snapped and the
exhibit crashed to the floor. Thalia dropped off the second-floor railing and
landed across from me, on the other side of the globe. The lion regarded us both,
trying to decide which of us to kill first.
Zoë and Bianca were above us, bows ready, but they kept having to move
around to get a good angle.
‘No clear shot!’ Zoë yelled. ‘Get it to open its mouth more!’
The lion snarled from the top of the globe.
I looked around. Options. I needed…
The gift shop. I had a vague memory from my trip here as a little kid.
Something I’d made my mom buy me, and I’d regretted it. If they still sold that
stuff…
‘Thalia,’ I said, ‘keep it occupied.’
She nodded grimly.
‘Hi-yah!’ She pointed her spear and a spidery arc of blue electricity shot out,
zapping the lion in the tail.
‘ROOOOOOOAR!’ The lion turned and pounced. Thalia rolled out of its way,
holding up Aegis to keep the monster at bay, and I ran for the gift shop.
‘This is no time for souvenirs, boy!’ Zoë yelled.
I dashed into the shop, knocking over rows of T-shirts, jumping over tables
full of glow-in-the-dark planets and space ooze. The sales lady didn’t protest.
She was too busy cowering behind her cash register.
There! On the far wall – glittery silver packets. Whole racks of them. I
scooped up every kind I could find and ran out of the shop with an armful.
Zoë and Bianca were still showering arrows on the monster, but it was no
good. The lion seemed to know better than to open its mouth too much. It
snapped at Thalia, slashing with its claws. It even kept its eyes narrowed to tiny
slits.
Thalia jabbed at the monster and backed up. The lion pressed her.
‘Percy,’ she called, ‘whatever you’re going to do –’
The lion roared and swatted her like a cat toy, sending her flying into the side
of a Titan rocket. Her head hit the metal and she slid to the floor.
‘Hey!’ I yelled at the lion. I was too far away to strike, so I took a risk: I
hurled Riptide like a throwing knife. It bounced off the lion’s side, but that was
enough to get the monster’s attention. It turned towards me and snarled.
There was only one way to get close enough. I charged and, as the lion leaped
to intercept me, I chucked a space-food pouch into its maw – a chunk of
cellophane-wrapped freeze-dried strawberry parfait.
The lion’s eyes got wide and it gagged like a cat with a hairball.
I couldn’t blame it. I remembered feeling the same way when I’d tried to eat
space food as a kid. The stuff was just plain nasty.
‘Zoë, get ready!’ I yelled.
Behind me, I could hear people screaming. Grover was playing another
horrible song on his pipes.
I scrambled away from the lion. It managed to choke down the space-food
packet and looked at me with pure hate.
‘Snack time!’ I yelled.
It made the mistake of roaring at me, and I got an icecream sandwich in its
throat. Fortunately, I had always been a pretty good pitcher, even though
baseball wasn’t my game. Before the lion could stop gagging, I shot in two more
flavours of ice cream and a freeze-dried spaghetti dinner.
The lion’s eyes bugged. It opened its mouth wide and reared up on its back
paws, trying to get away from me.
‘Now!’ I yelled.
Immediately, arrows sprouted from the lion’s maw – two, four, six. The lion
thrashed wildly, turned and fell backwards. And then it was still.
Alarms wailed throughout the museum. People were flocking to the exits.
Security guards were running around in a panic with no idea what was going on.
Grover knelt at Thalia’s side and helped her up. She seemed okay, just a little
dazed. Zoë and Bianca dropped from the balcony and landed next to me.
Zoë eyed me cautiously. ‘That was… an interesting strategy.’
‘Hey, it worked.’
She didn’t argue.
The lion seemed to be melting, the way dead monsters do sometimes, until
there was nothing left but its glittering fur coat, and even that seemed to be
shrinking to the size of a normal lion’s pelt.
‘Take it,’ Zoë told me.
I stared at her. ‘What, the lion’s fur? Isn’t that, like, an animal-rights violation
or something?’
‘It is a spoil of war,’ she told me. ‘It is rightly thine.’
‘You killed it,’ I said.
She shook her head, almost smiling. ‘I think thy icecream sandwich did that.
Fair is fair, Percy Jackson. Take the fur.’
I lifted it up; it was surprisingly light. The fur was smooth and soft. It didn’t
feel at all like something that could stop a blade. As I watched, the pelt shifted
and changed into a full-length golden-brown coat.
‘Not exactly my style,’ I murmured.
‘We have to get out of here,’ Grover said. ‘The security guards won’t stay
confused for long.’
I noticed for the first time how strange it was that the guards hadn’t rushed
forward to arrest us. They were scrambling in all directions except ours, like
they were madly searching for something. A few were running into the walls or
each other.
‘You did that?’ I asked Grover.
He nodded, looking a little embarrassed. ‘A minor confusion song. I played
some Barry Manilow. It works every time. But it’ll only last a few seconds.’
‘The security guards are not our biggest worry,’ Zoë said. ‘Look.’
Through the glass walls of the museum, I could see a group of men walking
across the lawn. Grey men in grey camouflage outfits. They were too far away
for us to see their eyes, but I could feel their gaze aimed straight at me.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘They’ll be hunting me. I’ll distract them.’
‘No,’ Zoë said. ‘We go together.’
I stared at her. ‘But you said –’
‘You are part of this quest now,’ Zoë said grudgingly. ‘I do not like it, but
there is no changing fate. You are the fifth quest member. And we are not leaving
anyone behind.’
11
Grover Gets A Lamborghini
We were crossing the Potomac when we spotted the helicopter. It was a sleek
black military model just like the one we’d seen at Westover Hall. And it was
coming straight towards us.
‘They know the van,’ I said. ‘We have to ditch it.’
Zoë swerved into the fast lane. The helicopter was gaining.
‘Maybe the military will shoot it down,’ Grover said hopefully.
‘The military probably thinks it’s one of theirs,’ I said. ‘How can the General
use mortals, anyway?’
‘Mercenaries,’ Zoë said bitterly. ‘It is distasteful, but many mortals will fight
for any cause as long as they are paid.’
‘But don’t these mortals see who they’re working for?’ I asked. ‘Don’t they
notice all the monsters around them?’
Zoë shook her head. ‘I do not know how much they see through the Mist. I
doubt it would matter to them if they knew the truth. Sometimes mortals can be
more horrible than monsters.’
The helicopter kept coming, making a lot better time than we were through
D.C. traffic.
Thalia closed her eyes and prayed hard. ‘Hey, Dad. A lightning bolt would be
nice about now. Please?’
But the sky stayed grey and snowy. No sign of a helpful thunderstorm.
‘There!’ Bianca said. ‘That parking lot!’
‘We’ll be trapped,’ Zoë said.
‘Trust me,’ Bianca said.
Zoë shot across two lanes of traffic and into a mall parking lot on the south
bank of the river. We left the van and followed Bianca down some steps.
‘Subway entrance,’ Bianca said. ‘Let’s go south. Alexandria.’
‘Anything,’ Thalia agreed.
We bought tickets and got through the turnstiles, looking behind us for any
signs of pursuit. A few minutes later we were safely aboard a southbound train,
riding away from D.C. As our train came above ground, we could see the
helicopter circling the parking lot, but it didn’t come after us.
Grover let out a sigh. ‘Nice job, Bianca, thinking of the subway.’
Bianca looked pleased. ‘Yeah, well. I remembered that station from when
Nico and I came through last summer. I was really surprised to see it, because it
wasn’t here when we used to live in D.C.’
Grover frowned. ‘New? But that station looked really old.’
‘I guess,’ Bianca said. ‘But trust me, when we lived here as little kids, there
was no subway.’
Thalia sat forward. ‘Wait a minute. No subway at all?’
Bianca nodded.
Now, I knew nothing about D.C., but I didn’t see how their whole subway
system could be less than twelve years old. I guess everyone else was thinking
the same thing, because they looked pretty confused.
‘Bianca,’ Zoë said. ‘How long ago…’ Her voice faltered. The sound of the
helicopter was getting louder again.
‘We need to change trains,’ I said. ‘Next station.’
Over the next half hour, all we thought about was getting away safely. We
changed trains twice. I had no idea where we were going, but after a while we
lost the helicopter.
Unfortunately, when we finally got off the train we found ourselves at the end
of the line, in an industrial area with nothing but warehouses and railway tracks.
And snow. Lots of snow. It seemed much colder here. I was glad of my new lionfur coat.
We wandered through the railway yard, thinking there might be another
passenger train somewhere, but there were just rows and rows of freight cars,
most of which were covered in snow, like they hadn’t moved in years.
A homeless guy was standing at a trashcan fire. We must’ve looked pretty
pathetic, because he gave us a toothless grin and said, ‘Y’ all need to get warmed
up? Come on over!’
We huddled round his fire. Thalia’s teeth were chattering. She said, ‘Well this
is g-g-g-great.’
‘My hooves are frozen,’ Grover complained.
‘Feet,’ I corrected, for the sake of the homeless guy.
‘Maybe we should contact camp,’ Bianca said. ‘Chiron –’
‘No,’ Zoë said. ‘They cannot help us any more. We must finish this quest
ourselves.’
I gazed miserably around the railway yard. Somewhere, far to the west,
Annabeth was in danger. Artemis was in chains. A doomsday monster was on
the loose. And we were stuck on the outskirts of D.C. sharing a homeless
person’s fire.
‘You know,’ the homeless man said, ‘you’re never completely without
friends.’ His face was grimy and his beard tangled, but his expression seemed
kindly. ‘You kids need a train going west?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘You know of any?’
He pointed one greasy hand.
Suddenly I noticed a freight train, gleaming and free of snow. It was one of
those automobile-carrier trains, with steel mesh curtains and a triple-deck of cars
inside. The side of the freight train said SUN WEST LINE.
‘That’s… convenient,’ Thalia said. ‘Thanks, uh…’
She turned to the homeless guy, but he was gone. The trashcan in front of us
was cold and empty, as if he’d taken the flames with him.
An hour later we were rumbling west. There was no problem about who would
drive now, because we all got our own luxury car. Zoë and Bianca were crashed
out in a Lexus on the top deck. Grover was playing race-car driver behind the
wheel of a Lamborghini. And Thalia had hot-wired the radio in a black
Mercedes SLK so she could pick up the alt rock stations from D.C.
‘Join you?’ I asked her.
She shrugged, so I climbed into the shotgun seat.
The radio was playing the White Stripes. I knew the song because it was one
of the only CDs I owned that my mom liked. She said it reminded her of Led
Zeppelin. Thinking about my mom made me sad, because it didn’t seem likely
I’d be home for Christmas. I might not live that long.
‘Nice coat,’ Thalia told me.
I pulled it round me, thankful for the warmth. ‘Yeah, but the Nemean Lion
wasn’t the monster we’re looking for.’
‘Not even close. We’ve got a long way to go.’
‘Whatever this mystery monster is, the General said it would come for you.
They wanted to isolate you from the group, so the monster will appear and battle
you one on one.’
‘He said that?’
‘Well, something like that. Yeah.’
‘That’s great. I love being used as bait.’
‘No idea what the monster might be?’
She shook her head morosely. ‘But you know where we’re going, don’t you?
San Francisco. That’s where Artemis was heading.’
I remembered something Annabeth had said at the dance: how her dad was
moving to San Francisco, and there was no way she could go. Half-bloods
couldn’t live there.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What’s so bad about San Francisco?’
‘The Mist is really thick there because the Mountain of Despair is so near.
Titan magic – what’s left of it – still lingers. Monsters are attracted to that area
like you wouldn’t believe.’
‘What’s the Mountain of Despair?’
Thalia raised an eyebrow. ‘You really don’t know? Ask stupid Zoë. She’s the
expert.’
She glared out the windshield. I wanted to ask her what she was talking about,
but I also didn’t want to sound like an idiot. I hated feeling like Thalia knew
more than I did, so I kept my mouth shut.
The afternoon sun shone through the steel-mesh side of the freight car, casting
a shadow across Thalia’s face. I thought about how different she was from Zoë –
Zoë all formal and aloof like a princess, Thalia with her ratty clothes and her
rebel attitude. But there was something similar about them, too. The same kind
of toughness. Right now, sitting in the shadows with a gloomy expression,
Thalia looked a lot like one of the Hunters.
Then suddenly it hit me: ‘That’s why you don’t get along with Zoë.’
Thalia frowned. ‘What?’
‘The Hunters tried to recruit you,’ I guessed.
Her eyes got dangerously bright. I thought she was going to zap me out of the
Mercedes, but she just sighed.
‘I almost joined them,’ she admitted. ‘Luke, Annabeth and I ran into them
once, and Zoë tried to convince me. She almost did, but…’
‘But?’
Thalia’s fingers gripped the wheel. ‘I would’ve had to leave Luke.’
‘Oh.’
‘Zoë and I got into a fight. She told me I was being stupid. She said I’d regret
my choice. She said Luke would let me down some day.’
I watched the sun through the metal curtain. We seemed to be travelling faster
each second – shadows flickering like an old movie projector.
‘That’s harsh,’ I said. ‘Hard to admit Zoë was right.’
‘She wasn’t right! Luke never let me down. Never.’
‘We’ll have to fight him,’ I said. ‘There’s no way around it.’
Thalia didn’t answer.
‘You haven’t seen him lately,’ I warned. ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but –’
‘I’ll do what I have to.’
‘Even if that means killing him?’
‘Do me a favour,’ she said. ‘Get out of my car.’
I felt so bad for her I didn’t argue.
As I was about to leave, she said, ‘Percy.’
When I looked back, her eyes were red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from anger
or sadness. ‘Annabeth wanted to join the Hunters, too. Maybe you should think
about why.’
Before I could respond, she raised the power windows and shut me out.
I sat in the driver’s seat of Grover’s Lamborghini. Grover was asleep in the back.
He’d finally given up trying to impress Zoë and Bianca with his pipe music after
he played ‘Poison Ivy’ and caused that very stuff to sprout from their Lexus’ air
conditioner.
As I watched the sun go down, I thought of Annabeth. I was afraid to go to
sleep. I was worried what I might dream.
‘Oh, don’t be afraid of dreams,’ a voice said right next me.
I looked over. Somehow, I wasn’t surprised to find the homeless guy from the
railway yard sitting in the shotgun seat. His jeans were so worn out they were
almost white. His coat was ripped, with stuffing coming out. He looked kind of
like a teddy bear that had been run over by a truck.
‘If it weren’t for dreams,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t know half the things I know
about the future. They’re better than Olympus tabloids.’ He cleared his throat,
then held up his hands dramatically:
‘Dreams like a podcast,
Downloading truth in my ears.
They tell me cool stuff.’
‘Apollo?’ I guessed, because I figured nobody else could make a haiku that bad.
He put his finger to his lips. ‘I’m incognito. Call me Fred.’
‘A god named Fred?’
‘Eh, well… Zeus insists on certain rules. Hands off, when there’s a human
quest. Even when something really major is wrong. But nobody messes with my
baby sister. Nobody.’
‘Can you help us, then?’
‘Shhh. I already have. Haven’t you been looking outside?’
‘The train. How fast are we moving?’
Apollo chuckled. ‘Fast enough. Unfortun