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 toward 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 toward 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 toward 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 looked funny, except that the top half of his body was so scary. Coarse brown hair started at about his belly button 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 he’s the Min—” “Don’t say his name,” she warned. “Names have power.” The pine tree was still way too far—a hundred yards 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 fifty feet 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 directions 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 yards, 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 toward me this time, toward 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 toward the road, trying to lead the monster away from Grover. “Run, Percy!” she told me. “I can’t go any farther. 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 pummeling 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 gotten 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 toward 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 toward 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 backward 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 barreled 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, toward 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 blond hair curled like a princess’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.”
FIVE 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 blond 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 bull’s horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn’t been a nightmare. “The Minotaur,” I said. “Um, Percy, it isn’t a good idea—”
“That’s what they call him 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 yards.” “That’s good,” he said. “That’s good. I don’t think you could 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 the water, 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 amphitheater, 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 blond-haired girl who’d spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored 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 fit 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 farther 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 blond 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 inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With her deep tan and her curly blond hair, she was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California girl would look like, except her eyes ruined the image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds; pretty, but intimidating, too, as if she were analyzing 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 blond 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 shoe box—“that you have killed the 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 co*ke can?” “Eh? Oh, all right.” Grover bit a huge shard out of the empty aluminum 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 endeavors: 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 co*ke. 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 co*ke 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 paralyzed 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 s’mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate.” 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.”
SIX 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 flip or something. I looked back at the farmhouse. It was a lot bigger than I’d realized—four stories tall, sky blue with white trim, like an upscale 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, getting chewed out 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 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 gotten 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 armory later.”
I wanted to ask what kind of summer camp had an armory, 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 amphitheater, 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 center of the field was a huge stone-lined firepit. Even though it
was a warm afternoon, the hearth smoldered. 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 hologram, 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 peaco*cks. “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 gray 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 color 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 HALFBLOOD T-shirt 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, eons 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 blond 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 toward 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 center. 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 toward the archery range. I stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren’t bowing anymore. 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- colored 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 counselor 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 travelers.” 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 feet 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 Fur…I mean, your math 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 toward 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.” “Erre 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 toward 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 toward a cinder- block 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 johns. 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 toward 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 toward 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 backward into a shower stall. She struggled, gasping, and her friends started coming toward 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 toward 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.”
SEVEN 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 skeptically, 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 twenty feet 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 colors. 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 counselors, 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 counselor, 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. Travelers, 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 counselor—should’ve
