4. I PLAY A PINOCHLE WITH A HORSE
This is my version of percy jackson and the olympians series, in this a new character Alethia is shown, she is a daughter of Zeus and Hera ... well she is 2750 years old athenian who after death was given a place on olympus, she has defeated the worst monsters ever and her past quest is the most interesting ever ...want to know the story, you'll see the flashbacks ... so just read onnn
story from chapter 1 - 4 is same ...
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. two girls sat beside me, a blonde with a smirky expression and a beautiful girl feeding that stuff scraping drops off my chin and she looked worried.
When I opened my eyes the two girls stopped their talking and the girl with the spoon asked me "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.
Next time I woke up the girls weren't there.
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. He looked like someone sticked many eyes on his body. Just like someone super powerful animated hero. At first I wanted to protest what was it, then my weakness acted up and I thought that my brain is toying with me.
(THE REST OF THE PART GOES WITH GROVER AND PERCY TALKING ... IT CONTINUES)
Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The two girls who were at my bedside were there too.
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 and umm thats her best friend Alethia. They both are the only campers who've been longer than anyone at this camp."
"And you already know Chiron.." He said.
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.
"Alethia my diet coke" Mr.D snorted and thunder rolled the sky.
"I dont think he will like that" Annabeth said and transferred the can from the side table to that pinochle dude.
"Annabeth, Alethia ?" Mr. Brunner called to the girls.
They came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young ladies nursed you back to health, Percy. Annabeth, my dear, why don't you both 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 looked at me like I was some kind of stinking burrito.
The other girl Alethia, she looked beautiful with stormy blue eyes and silky bown hair, she was most probably my height but I guessed she was much friendlier so I decided to stand beside her. She wore formal pink skirt with a jeans pant, her hair were flying in the cool breeze. Her eyes reminded me looking at the sky.
Annabeth 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."
"Dont be rude Annabeth he's just ..." said Alethia which made me a little better.
Annabeth then 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."
"How do you use that name" Alethia laughed "Its awkward".
"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.
Alethia just as me looked confused giggling at the thought of Brun-Chiron as a school teacher.
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.
"HEY" Alethia protested "Dont scare him" I thought she had a high status to talk with that Mr.D in that tone.
"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.
After a moment of silence Alethia symphatetically said " I think ... umm, well percy yeah the ancient greek gods you know like Zeus, Poseidon and all like that, Percy see dont panick, dont stress"
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 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 "
"Chiron!" Alethia interrupted "Percy there are 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." Chiron snorted.
"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."
Alethia's expression darkened and angrily she said " Mortals, Insignificant fools" , Which I didn't understand a bit and i thought better not ask that angry girl what she meant.
"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, even Alethia , 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," Alethia 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?" Snorted Mr.D
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.
Alethia cleared her throat "Umm your restrictions".
"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 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.
"It's not like that..." Alethia comforted
"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?"
Alethia snickered " Well Dionysus, you've got some sense of humour"
Mr.D sighed "Was it a joke?"
"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 strait-jacket 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.
I knew Alethia was kind and friendly but I wasn't that good with girls so I tried much to avoid her and talk with Chiron
"Will Grover be okay?" I asked Chiron.
Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled.
"Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been ... umm, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."said Alethia.
"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?"I shifted towards Chiron
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."