Two
- People Before Me -
Messages - Inbox
From: dad (xxx xxx xxxx)
peter, where are u? pls explain. And u better be home tonite. ur mother will worry
There was only one clear-sighted mortal living in Camp Half-Blood, and she was the current Oracle of Delphi. Rachel Elizabeth Dare. Peter remembered her in Percy's stories. He liked her, and he liked how she was willing to sacrifice a lot of things for the good of the world. He didn't know her in real life, but he was excited to meet her for the first time.
"You'll have to stay overnight," Annabeth said as they made their way to up to a hill not too far from the cabins. "A meeting will be held with the Council of Cloven Elders in the morning, to discuss about the search for Percy. If there's anything to come by, I'll tell you."
"Okay," he said. He vaguely remembered hearing about the Council in Percy's story, but he forgot most of the details. "Do I have to attend too?"
"You don't have to. We're just making plans for the quest, that's all. I have to attend because I'm an honorary member." They stopped in front of a menacing-looking cave, with red curtain draping the entrance. "This is it." She lifted the curtains and went inside. Peter considered for a moment, took a deep breath and followed.
The cave was like an art museum. A bright lantern lit the whole room. The cave walls were lined with painted canvases and sketches. Surrealistic art and childish graffiti decorated the room. There was a bed and a laptop tucked on one corner, a stereo and music player on the other. A sink and a mirror besides the entrance. Electricity and plumbing in this place. There were more mess in the cave that Peter couldn't name it all.
"Rachel's not here," Annabeth said, looking around. "Well, you can stay and wait here, Peter. She'll be here soon, I know."
"No, no, I'm here," said a muffled voice from outside. Then a woman entered. She was a beautiful lady with long dark red hair tied into a flowery bun, and it reminded Peter of a rose. She had bright green eyes, and freckles that ran across the bridge of her nose. She was tall, like Annabeth. She wore a winter cloak over a woman's business outfit. "Annabeth!" she said happily, hugging her friend. "I haven't seen you for a long time! Heard you're going to come back today, so I had to leave work early. How's the excavation in Alaska?"
Annabeth let go of her friend and grinned at her. "It's good, it's going well, we're bound to find something in the ruins soon. There's a lot of Roman supplies that could be salvaged and reused. We're bringing them to Camp Jupiter, because those guys know what do with them than us."
"I heard we have a new guy in the camp," Rachel said. "Is he a camper? Determined or undetermined?"
"He's not a camper. But the new guy, he's right here." She looked behind to Peter, and it was only then that Rachel noticed him.
Peter shuffled on his feet, and looked at them sheepishly. "Hi."
"Rachel, this is Peter," Annabeth said. "He's clear-sighted, like you."
The woman's eyes brightened. "A mortal?" She looked at him real hard, her eyes scanning Peter like a metal detector. "Is this him?" She said slowly.
Annabeth nodded. "His brother."
The woman looked like she wanted to squeal. "What a cute boy. Much more cuter than in the baby photos Percy showed me. I'm Rachel Elizabeth Dare. Call me Rachel, I'm really comfortable being on first-name basis with friends. Tell me Peter, how old are you?"
"Uhh, thirteen."
"Do you have a girlfriend?"
"Would you mind if he could stay here for one night?" Annabeth interrupted. "There's going to be a meeting held at the forest in the morning to discuss about him and, well, Percy. "
Rachel was still considering a decision when a horn blew somewhere in a distance. "Let's talk about it at the pavilion, can we?" Rachel said. "I'm hungry already."
Peter only sat when he watched the camp traditions carry on without him. The campers in the dining pavilion raised their goblets and cheered. Then they stood up, bringing their plates with them, and made a line to the firepit, scrapping a portion of the food to the firepit. Peter sat besides Rachel, and Annabeth was in another table, where she and the other Pinocle players were talking. Chiron and Mr. D was there, too. He wondered what they were talking about, but he probably got the gist of it when a few them glanced at him.
Rachel took out a new pair of steel chopsticks from her pocket. "I feel like eating some nice Chinese noodles right now. If not, how about the best kind of sushi out there?" She looked at the plate hopefully, as if she was waiting for what she just requested. Nothing happened. She sighed. "I'm on some kind of special diet," she said, more to herself, but he thought she might be talking to him, too. "I...I got some health problems to fix it. Alright, I want some Caesar salad with my favorite dressings," she mumbled regrettably.
Peter's phone vibrated in his pocket. He looked around for a moment before taking out and looking at it from under the table. It was his dad. And he was angry with him. Peter composed another apology and sent it, promising to call him first thing in the early morning. He felt guilty of leaving his father alone in their home. And his mother...
His heart ached. It was less than a day and he was already missing his family, his friends. He pushed all this thoughts back and ate his barbeque to distract himself.
When everyone finished eating, Chiron made an announcement, reminding the campers that Capture The Flag would happen in two days. Cabin Eleven would present the laurels. Then he addressed the fresh rumor of a new camper, telling them that it was just Peter, who was mortal and a guest and would stay for the night or more nights, and if it was the latter, it would be kind to show him around by the campers, and don't forget to be nice to him and don't introduce him to the hogs, or they will be punished severely, said Chiron.
After dinner, they all went to the amphitheater. Peter watched the bonfire rise and change colors as all the campers sang with their unusual songs and lyrics, holding hands. Peter only slumped in his seat and looked around him. He was the most tired person in this place. Camp Half-Blood was surely a magical place for demigods and his brothers, but it was not for Peter.
"Don't you feel awkward sleeping in the same room with an older girl?" Rachel grinned as she moved to her bed. Peter was brushing his teeth at a nearby bathroom sink that was situated near the cave entrance. He was sleeping on the floor, with a mattress tucked in a corner, far from Rachel's bed, blanket and pillows neatly stacked on each other.
"Not really." Peter spat out the toothpaste. "I'm more afraid that they would feel awkward with me around." He gargled water, spat, and wiped his mouth with his face towel that was hanging on his neck. "I know I won't do any harm."
Rachel sported this Cheshire Cat grin that made Peter's skin crawl, like she was the one who was going to do the harm part. "What a gentleman. You didn't answer my question earlier, Peter. Have you had a girlfriend?"
Peter shook his head. "I'm not really interested in girls." He didn't know why. Normally kids his age would start talking about dating and girl crushes, now that they had entered teenagehood and all that, but he was just too buried with school work and his hobbies, like skating, reading, and microblogging. He then realized that his sentence could be misinterpreted, and Rachel's grin stretched. "Not interested in dating girls now," he said, hastily.
She laughed. Then she reached down under her bed and pulled out a couple of sketchbooks and flat boxes. For a brief moment, Peter saw a red tattoo at the side of her neck. "Since I have company tonight, would you like me to take you to a tour of the past and the future?"
He smiled. "That sounds interesting." He sat on the floor cross-legged besides her bed. Rachel flipped through her older sketches, which was kept in the boxes. She told him that they were done when she was only a teenager. Each drawing, each sketch had a story behind it, and it was mostly stories from the Titan War, stories that were tied to Percy's adventures.
She showed her a black-and-white portrait sketch of young Percy Jackson.
"Why are there holes?" Peter asked, pointing at a group of tiny black dots on his brother's nose. He shivered when he first spotted them. He didn't like seeing punctured holes grouped together closely.
"Oh, that's—" she laughed nervously. "—that's nothing, Peter, ignore it."
Despite the small damages on the portrait, there was his older brother, young and alive, showing a brave and determined face. He was a natural, looking like that.
"How long have you been staying here?" Peter asked he as he leafed through the pages of an old sketchbook.
She shrugged. Rachel reached out to one of her sketchpads and flipped to a blank page. "I'm not sure. I moved in here after I graduated from college—Master's Degree, yeah. But when I was your age, I stayed here at camp over the summer and winter breaks, like Annabeth and the rest of my friends. Apollo built this cave for me, one time when I was away. I really thought he was joking, but hey."
"You're really talented."
"Thank you." She beamed at him. "Now, can you stay still for a couple of minutes? You can still look at the sketches, don't worry."
"Okay." Peter couldn't help but fix his messy hair, and he felt shy, being drawn. I'm getting a portrait of myself, he thought, and now he was grinning shyly to himself. It was quiet for a while, the sound of Rachel's pencil scratching the paper a soft rhythm to Peter's ears. "Do mortals usually go on quests?"
She was making circle motions in the paper. "No, not really. In very special cases, they can accompany demigods in quests, but that's very rare. We have the Hundred-Year Quest that happens, well, every one hundred years. This is not known to the demigods, not known in general. In fact, it's actually top secret."
"Have you known about it for a long time?"
"No, but I read a whole history about the people who took on the Hundred Year Quest before you."
"There's..." Peter swallowed. "There's a history? This is recorded?"
Rachel nodded, tapping the butt of her pencil on her chin. "There's a poor Jewish boy from Israel, 1924. Then a posh painter guy from France, 1824. Then a queer princess from Japan, 1724."
"It's not just here in Camp Half-Blood?"
"Yeah, but I don't know why it jumps around. It may be because our gods are jumping from one powerful nation to another, before it was the United States. But Hundred-Year Quests are not appointed by the gods or some more powerful being. It all started just like any other quests. So, really, what makes them special? But one thing in common in all the quests is that they're super dangerous, and steered the world to many major changes."
She put down the pencil, leaned down the bed, and rested her chin on the back of her hand. "Now I wonder what a middle-class white boy from New York, 2024, will bring us."
She's scaring me, he thought. He managed a nervous chuckle. Rachel smiled widely, reached out and patted his shoulder. "Sorry about that, boyo. It just sucks that we're being kept in the dark, both of us. We can see through the Mist, but we don't have super powers so we don't deserve to know all the good stuff."
Peter only nodded, still shaken about the new knowledge she had given him, and the weight on his shoulder was heavier than before.
"If you think you're being kept in the dark," he said. "How did you find Camp Half-Blood?"
"Percy and Annabeth found me," she answered. "It's really Percy, but it's a long, long story that your brother probably have told you." Peter smiled at this.
He scanned through more pages of the sketchbook, taking in the images. Landscapes and skyscrapers. Sketches of winged horses and large hounds. The faces of Percy and Annabeth and maybe some of his brother's friends, too.
There was one picture that had his attention longer than the rest. It was a sketch of a teenage boy and a little girl. The boy was kneeling, gazing up to the girl, his whole figure frayed, his clothes singed. He looked like a hero from a shounen manga, all bloody and beaten up. He looked desperate, as if he was begging for something really important. It was a black and white sketch, but the boy's eyes were colored blue.
It made Peter put a hand on his own eye.
The little girl was dressed in shawls. She looked down to the boy, her face bored, unreadable. She carried an aura of authority, of someone in higher position.
"It's a vague memory," Rachel started, seeing that he was interested with the picture. "It happened back during the Titan War. I was being held to safety in the throne room on Olympus with a goddess when someone busted in. We thought it was Kronos, neither it was Percy, yet for some reason, that person almost felt like him. Then I realized it was just a demigod."
Peter looked up to Rachel, not removing the hand from his face.
"He looked like he was ready to collapse," she continued. "I thought he was going to, because of his state. But he ran up to the goddess, got down on his knees, and he started demanding something from her. I kept thinking, maybe he was from Kronos's army, and he was going to harm the goddess if he didn't get whatever he wanted. There was a long, aggressive discussion between them. But I couldn't remember anything after that. It was all a blur. Before I knew it, the titan lord was defeated. The war was over.
"Whatever they were talking about, it helped me set my decision to become the Oracle of Delphi." Rachel stopped scribbling. She turned the sketchbook to him. "What do you think?"
Peter stared. It was a portrait of him surrounded by sketchbooks, holding one, too. His eyes were half-closed, looking down at the pictures on the paper. He looked sad.
He grinned, but it was painful. His jawline felt like it was about to rip. "Love it. Thank you."
She smiled back, and the smile reminded him of his mother.
Peter got up at 5:45 in the morning. He walked down the forest with Annabeth at 6. Regardless of the snowfall last night that marked the true beginning of winter, it looked like it didn't happen at all. It looked more like spring than winter. Percy said the forest had monsters in it, and it was his least favorite place in Camp, but it didn't look like it. He also said that anyone entering the forest should at least carry a weapon. Annabeth came with none. "Don't worry about it," she said. "At this time of the morning, the monsters are asleep. You really don't want to come?"
Peter shook his head. "I'll stick around here and wait for you."
"I see. Well, even though there's no danger being here, it's technically not safe, okay? You go get some breakfast at the pavilion. Try to talk to the campers. Make friends." Peter looked skeptical, but she laughed and patted his shoulder. "Just try, okay? You'll be fine here."
They went to an area where the sunlight seeped through the large trees. They've entered a grove, and nymphs were coming out from their homes. Peter couldn't help but stare at them. They were all beautiful creatures.
Annabeth stopped on her tracks. Peter was following closely behind, so he bumped into her. "Sorry," they said in unison. But Annabeth was looking not at him or their way, but to the left. He followed her gaze. There was a young tree among taller, older trees. Light shone brightly on it, almost like a dramatic spotlight. Annabeth walked towards it, and Peter followed her.
"Peter," Annabeth started, when they stood near the small tree. "Meet Grover Underwood."
The cold wind blew past the trees. The nymphs were making their way to the small creek flowing nearby.
A lump rose up to Peter's throat. "Grover?"
Annabeth touched one of the leaves of the tree, but didn't pluck it out. "Grover. Percy's best friend. When satyrs die, they become plants. Saps. Trees. Percy and Grover have an empathy link. They're connected to each other. If one of them dies, the other side of the line will die, too."
"Grover's...dead?" Peter knew about the empathy link. But only yesterday did he realize that the stories Percy told were real. He faintly remembered Grover Underwood, but the memories of him were distant. "Does that mean Percy is dead, too? Like Ganymede said? But I thought.."
"Not really, Pete." Annabeth withdrew her hand. "When Percy went missing, we looked everywhere for him. High and low. Inside the country, outside the country. I was with Grover and a few of our friends. One day, here in camp, Grover suddenly fainted in the middle of the strawberry fields when he was playing with his pipe. He came down with a high fever, went into this deep coma for a long time. The Council saw that—while his health wasn't failing—he was going deeper and deeper into a limbo. The brain functioned so little his body thought he was dead and..." She crouched down to the tree, so they were height-to-height. "This happened."
Somewhere, a tree nymph was watching from afar, but when Peter looked, she disappeared.
"I'm really sorry to hear about Grover," Peter said. "I remember him, not a lot though, but Percy tells a lot of stories about him."
"Grover is alive." Annabeth stood up again. "The Council themselves sense it. The Lord of the Wild can't just die. Percy is out there, probably in the same coma as well. And if the Council approves of you, in the next few days there will be a quest to find Nameless and you will lead it."
A/N: I didn't tell you guys in the previous chapter that the original fifteen chapters of Graveyard Of Heroes (formerly The Jackson Legacy) is still available in my FFN profile. I do not recommend that you read that if you don't want to wait for the next chapter, because there are a lot of changes in this revised version. Also, for those who know the story but still want to re-read it, please refrain from spoilers in your reviews. It is also tradition to make a sneak peek of the next chapter, which is written below.
Next Chapter: Third Member - Peter makes friends in Camp Half-Blood and gets to experience what is life for the demigods living there. All is short-lived when Annabeth summons him to the Big House to give him the details of his quest.