"Percy! You don't need to rescue me all the time! I had it under control!" my sister Grace Victoire Jackson, Gracie for short, yelled at me. "When are you gonna get it?! I'm not your little sister! We're twins! I don't need you to come swoop in and save the day! And my hanging out with Connor is none of your business!"
"Well, excuse me, Gracie Victoire, for trying to save your life! And you hanging out with Connor is my business!" Maybe that was going a bit too far. All that had happened was she was by the lake alone with Connor Stoll, one of the head counselors of the Hermes cabin, and it looked, from where I was on lookout duty, like they were going to kiss. So I dropped down from the tree and ran forward, with my sword drawn, like I was going into battle. And Connor jumped up from where he was sitting and ran back to the bonfire. So then, Gracie stood up really fast and ran after me. After a couple minutes of running, she caught up and pinned me to the ground. And then, she started yelling. So I yelled back, but I didn't have any "ammunition" against Connor. I mean, Connor's a pretty nice guy; you just always have to keep one hand on your wallet around him. Which is kind of how he and Gracie met.
His brother, Travis, stole her trident necklace after a bonfire one night. And she was really torn up about it. Poseidon had given it to her when we saved Zeus's lightning bolt. All I got was a disfigured head. But, anyway, Connor found out that Travis had the necklace and I suppose he liked her, or thought she didn't deserve to have something so special stolen, or whatever. So he got a hold of the necklace and returned it to her. And, ever since then, she's had a thing for Connor. She still hates Travis for stealing her most prized possession, but she's in love with Connor.
But, Gracie and I got into these fights all the time. It was like being around Annabeth, but, then again, Annabeth wasn't my twin sister, someone I couldn't get rid of or leave on her own. At least not without there being some inquiry on my father's part.
I should explain, though. How I came to having a twin sister. The year I turned twelve, I found out something about myself that if I went out and screamed it on a street corner, I would be transported to the nearest mental hospital in the Manhattan area. I am a half-blood. My mother is a mortal, but my father, is the Greek god, Poseidon.
See, if I yelled that on a street corner, everyone would wonder what nut-house I was due back at. And shortly after that I found out that I had a twin sister.
Half-bloods are very powerful, but we're very vulnerable too. We're easier to kill. We can be: a. killed by normal mortal ways (i.e. guns, knives, etc.) b. celestial bronze weapons-god ways- (i.e. guns, knives, etc, you get the idea) or c. devoured by monsters. Which do you think sounds more painful? And, what's worse, the more powerful you are, the more appetizing you smell to monsters.
But, anyway, I learned I had a sister after Poseidon revealed himself as my father, when he revealed himself to her. Because, we both fell in the creek during capture-the-flag and a trident appeared over where we sat and cast an orb over us. But, you know the gods, a simple note or phone call would be too easy. So they make funny shapes appear above their children to say, "Hey. I'm your dad," but, it's nothing that flashy. And after we both moved into the Poseidon cabin, I got her background story.
Gracie had been living on the streets since she was about 8 years old. She was an orphan, or so she'd been told. My mother knew that she had given birth to twins, but she was told that one of them didn't survive. So, apparently, someone, most likely one of my relatives (and I mean, my supernatural relatives), had come and taken Gracie with him and dropped her off at some orphanage near Long Island. And she grew up there, until she was about 7 or 8 years old. As she tells it, she was going to be put into foster care with a terrible couple who were looking for a kid to push around. So, at the tender age of 8 years old, Gracie ran away from the orphanage and into a world that no child should have to face.
She was chased and clawed by a Sphinx, lied to and deceived by a Cyclops, along with so many other encounters she has still to share with me. Normally, if someone said that, I'd say that they were lying, but Gracie still has the scars. The most noticeable is the thin scar that follows her jaw-line. From what she has told me, that scar is from an encounter with some dragon, but I think that's only what she prefers to think of it as. I've met so many worse creatures than dragons.
And sometime in those 4 years, she stumbled upon Grover, my best friend, who just happens to be a satyr. You know, half goat, half guy. Really nice, but a little high strung. Ok, a lot high strung. He recognized that she was a half-blood right away, and a powerful one at that, but couldn't place her parentage. So, after Grover asked for help in placing her parentage, she met Chiron. If you weren't a demigod (that's just a fancy way of saying half-blood), he'd just be a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. But, to demigods, he's the best camp counselor ever. And, oh yeah, he's a centaur.
A lot to take in at once, huh?
Well, after they figured out that she was a half-blood, they took her to Camp Half-Blood, which is basically a camp of most of the demigods in the U.S. There are 11 cabins, one for every throne on Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Artemis, and (until I came along) Poseidon's cabins had been empty because of various oaths they took and things that they've done. You see, Zeus, my dad, and Hades all took an oath that they would never again sire any children. We were too powerful.
Well, about 18 years ago, Zeus fell off the wagon. He got all moony-eyed for some Hollywood actress and, well, Thalia was born. She, like Gracie, ran away and lived on the streets. Until she fell in with Luke and Annabeth who also had run away. When those three were near Long Island, they stumbled upon Gracie and offered to let her come with them, because she seemed lost and alone. So, Gracie traveled with them for a while until she had this dream, and dreams for half-bloods are never just dreams, but Gracie's are more of what will happen in the future than what's happening in the present, where she saw that Luke was working for some enemy.
Now, keep in mind that this is a little girl of maybe 10, or 11, who doesn't know anything about her past or what this enemy is. She hasn't met Grover yet who will explain all of this to her, though she will after she has this dream.
In this dream, as she tells it, Luke was conversing with a golden sarcophagus. He was talking about a mutiny, an uprising, and destroying something called Camp Half-Blood (see, everything comes full-circle now).
Now this vision of hers wouldn't come true for at least 3 more years, but it got her attention. She had known that Luke was "bad", but there hadn't been a reason for her to leave Annabeth and Thalia. Now she had one. So, she left that next morning at the crack of dawn. Or she tried to. Annabeth woke up as she was leaving and rushed after her, careful not to wake the others. Annabeth asked why she was leaving, and Gracie told her about the dream she'd had. And Annabeth didn't believe her, just like how she didn't believe me when I told her the exact same thing almost 2 years later. After Luke tried to kill me.
Gracie says that she often woke up in the middle of the night to hear the three of them discussing her. They used words like, demigod, and centaur, and the phrase "Di Immortales" came up a lot.
As she returned to the city, she ran into Grover (I mean, literally, ran into him) and, well, he notified Chiron who took her to camp. The same day that Grover was leading Luke, Thalia, and Annabeth to Camp Half-Blood. And, Thalia never made it into the camp. Zeus turned her into a pine tree to preserve her memory and her spirit protects the camp. But, enough about the back story, let's fast-forward to the present.
"Percy! Stop sounding like Apollo when he's talking to Artemis! I'm not your little sister! You're not my protector! I can take care of myself! Gods know I have since I was little! And you! You don't know the first thing about me! I've lived all my life, on my own. Without you!" She turned and ran toward the beach where she always went when she was upset, muttering things about what an unfit brother and hero I was. I followed her until the beach and then sat on the hill near her favorite spot, a huge boulder that poked out of the water. One of her preferred activities that she often did when she was angry, was to "play" with the water. By playing, I mean, making the waves glide up onto the sand. And picking up water and making shapes out of it. Gracie could just pick up a handful of water and make something into it. Like a fish or a ball or, once, a mountain. I couldn't see what she was making today but I had a feeling it wasn't a ball or a fish. After applying various pinches and pulls to the water, she was left with something that looked like a bunch of symbols intertwined together: a lightning bolt, a bunch of grapes, a dove, an ax, a spear, a peacock, a bundle of wheat, an olive branch, a lyre, and a bow and quiver. Suddenly irritated and seemingly livid, she chucked the mass of symbols into the water and watched it dissolve.
This was bad. And the most terrible thing was, she had a reason to feel this way. One of the gods had dumped her in some orphanage and left her there. I know that if they'd done it to me, I'd be resentful too. And for Gracie to be angry was another problem entirely. Her temper raged and flared like hurricanes and tsunamis that devastated the landscape of seaside communities. I was going to join her on the boulder, but just like clockwork, Connor Stoll walked onto the beach and called out to her.
"Hey, Gracie! The War Council's meeting!" Gracie ran back to the beach where Connor was waiting and they walked to the Big House hand-in-hand. I stood there dumbfounded. What was going on? The War Council being called now?