AN: I am not dead! But that is no excuse to kill me, either. Stuff Happened and I was unable to get on with my Percy Jackson fics for ages. But thanks for persevering with my tardiness…I return a much wiser person. I promise I shall update more often and not leave Marlin stranded in mid-air after falling off a massive harpy anymore. Note that this chapter will see the introduction of an important new character… Ahem.
Disclaimer: Do I really need to do this all over again? Ditto last chapter. I own nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing! (except Marlin and Chai ;)
Chapter 6: Marlin gets Spear-Tackled by a Midget
(In which Little Miss Mozart beats Marlin to it)
Marlin was not dead.
Instead, he was sitting up in bed miserably, rather wishing that he had.
"Martin," Mr.D began coldly, godly breath rasping petulantly, "I don't know why the hell we waste precious moments of our life helping you stay alive. Honestly. Think of the masterpieces we could've made, the quests we could've-"
The air erupted with an explosion of music.
It was so abrupt and out of place that Marlin screeched in surprise, jolted up and whacked his head on the Demeter cabin ceiling, dislodging a particularly large pumpkin growing on the roof to crash on top of his head in much the same way an anvil would in a cartoon. Vince sprang up from his slumber like an electrified cat, Natascha fell out of her bed and stubbed her toe on one of Vince's combs, Karmen forgot what had happened, Caitlin screamed and Matthias littered the air with irate curses and started slicing his duvet and pillowcase into ribbons with his celestial bronze knife. Thesi laughed uncontrollably at them all and fell back to sleep, probably still laughing in his dreams. Mr. D spilt his can of Diet Coke all over Marlin, which he suspected he had been longing to do from day one.
Marlin remembered to breathe.
The music was beyond mere words. To say it was beautiful would be an insult. To say it was amazing would be like saying the Mona Lisa is a wee bit nice. You might as well slap the player in the face than call it enchanting.
This was music in its most pure and divine form.
Just knowing it was there made Marlin feel like he could grow little wings and fly away. It was so pristine and silky that he felt that everything bad that had ever happened to him was being washed away, every pain healed – indeed, the almighty bruise that the pumpkin had created on his forehead had already dissolved into nothingness, the countless cuts and scratches he had obtained after his fall from the harpy were fading and paining himself less.
It was then that he noticed Mr.D was slowly leaning dreamily towards the cabin door, wearing a satisfied grin, watery eyes becoming less bloodshot, as if he was expecting to suddenly float out the door sideways. Under normal circumstances, the Demeter cabin would burst out laughing until they cried blood at the sight of everyone's least favourite Olympian snoozing like a baby, but they were also too caught up in the enchantment to care.
They snapped out of it.
"I'm going to investigate!" Vince announced, bolting out the door, still wearing his pyjamas. The other half-bloods nodded and chased after him.
"Wait for me!" Marlin exclaimed desperately. He grabbed a tartan dressing gown that just happened to be there, and dashed out into the courtyard, not questioning why he was already able to walk.
To his dismay, his siblings had already scattered into the distance. Where had they gone?
He then noticed how quiet the courtyard was – silent as the grave. Even the cabins that were already empty seemed emptier than usual, as if the emptiness had gone outside to find where the music had come from.
Marlin followed his ears to the Big House.
"What. The. Hell."
Marlin swivelled around, only to find Clarisse and some of her friends wandering mindlessly towards the music as well. Cursing, he dashed behind a tree in the forest, hoping to avoid her unforgiving gaze.
He was glad that for once the daughter of Ares wasn't sneering at him or preparing to drown him on land in the volleyball sandpit (not pleasant); but he knew that Clarisse wouldn't even dare touch him, not while she was wearing her tailor made Hello Kitty pyjamas (in which the Kitty was smoking three cigars, wearing provocative tatooes, was riding a Harley Davidson over an Aethiopian Drakon and giving the finger to Zeus while lopping off the real Hello Kitty's head with a huge katana sword) which she wouldn't be seen dead in. Mainly because of the massive psycho Zeus would probably throw.
He was wrong.
A mammoth onion sailed through the forest and got him right in the eyes.
"Aaaaaaack!" he wailed in pain.
"Hey!" Clarisse called jeeringly behind him, "It's the Onion Boy!"
"Di immortales!" Marlin cursed, sprinting for his life.
"Oi! Come back here, Mr. Plantpot!" Another huge onion whizzed by and struck him in the small of the back.
"No! Spare me! I hate onions!" Marlin pleaded. What was it with him and massive vegetables today? "Where the hell did you get them, anyway?"
"If you don't succumb to my wrath right now, I'm going to cram more than a few of those down your little throat, Mason!"
"Aaaaaaaaaaaack!" Marlin squealed, narrowly dodging a boar shaped slipper adorned with full-on metal spikes and chains that one of her friends hurled at him. "I'm being assaulted with items of clothing!"
"We've got far worse things than that, you-"
The chase halted as soon as their eyes fell on the Big House.
It was not the sight of Chiron, Percy and Thalia looking as if they'd just seen Hades wearing a shocking pink handbag, bright blue eyeliner and a miniskirt that made them stop. Nor was it the sight of almost half the camp standing around with a dreamy glow in their eyes, practically radiating health and life. It was not the intensely jealous expressions on the faces of the dryads and the Apollo cabin members. It was not the sight of Murphy the satyr looking incredibly sheepish – well, as sheepish as someone who is already half-goat can look – that caught their eyes.
No, it was the girl in the middle playing the violin.
Marlin immediately recognised her as the girl Murphy had carried into camp the other day. Short, ash blonde hair that was tinted brown, hawk-like hazelnut eyes that leered out blankly at everything that didn't matter but took avid interest in everything that did; and at the moment that was the violin she held in her bony, but supple hands.
She was painfully thin and way too small for her age – she stood at a mere four foot six – and there was something square-like to her shoulders, as if she had been kept in a cupboard or something.
But she was so totally absorbed in the music that Marlin wondered is she even realised how much people had assembled around her. Her prominent nose and eyebrows moved not once as her hands locked onto the motion of the bow and her fingers on the strings, eyes closed she weaved the notes like threads in the air, and Marlin could've sworn the music felt like a blanket that wrapped around his mind with the fabric of beauty that was being woven with the girl's grace, the silken whispering of the Muses filling her head.
And then she finally finished her rendition with a last, smooth note that swam longingly in the ears of every single soul that was there, slowly fading out of the grasp of mere mortal hands.
No one said a word. No one wanted the magic to go away.
But it did.
The girl gradually opened her eyes and quickly surveyed the crowd of gaping mouths around her, with absolutely no expression on her face - either she had expected them to be there or she was ignoring them, because not even the slightest smile widened her cracked lips.
Clarisse broke the silence.
"What. The. Hell." She proclaimed again, glaring at the girl suspiciously.
She finally spoke. "I. Like your. Shirt." The girl pointed at Clarisse's top, not noticing that Clarisse had turned a deep shade of blood red.
There was something odd about her speech that Marlin couldn't put his foot on. It was detached but melodic, cautious but beautiful. It was as if at every sentence she said, she got confused as to why her words didn't sail off into the air like the notes of her violin. Marlin racked his mind for that weird Italian word that described choppy music…staccato. That was it; she spoke in staccato.
The crowd, slightly cured of their numbness from the music's awe, slowly got up and steadily dispersed as the girl got more and more interested in Clarisse's shirt.
Murphy whimpered, "She healed herself…"
Chiron's eyes widened. "Without ambrosia or nectar? At all?…"
The satyr nodded furiously. "As soon as she woke up, she grabbed my panpipes and started playing Pachelbel's Canon…and her mauled arm began to fix itself."
"Pachelbel's Canon…! Hmph!" Thalia spat disdainfully. Marlin had forgotten that she was a huge heavy metal fan.
Chiron stared at the girl, lost for words or indeed thought. She was still examining Clarisse's top with far more interest than should be humanly possible to achieve.
"What does. Harley. Davidson mean?" she asked innocently.
Clarisse's beetroot face was scrunched up in bewilderment.
"WHAT THE HELL?!?" she shouted again.
"Pray, my dear child…" Chiron began. The centaur approached the girl gingerly, still in a kind of daze after the music. Marlin remembered that Chiron was a big fan of weird music. Dean Martin… Marlin shuddered. "What is your name?"
"Name?" the girl replied emotionlessly. "I do. Not. Have. A name. Music is. Better."
"This chick's giving me the creeps…" Percy muttered pathetically under his breath. Thalia nodded sagely in agreement. Chiron tried to smile.
"Then, what would you like to be known as?"
The girl drew her attention away from Clarisse's shirt, and then became impeccably fascinated with Marlin's dressing gown, sprinting up to him with such speed that he thought she was going to spear-tackle him.
"Aaaaaaaaack!" he yelled, not for the first time that day…
The girl stopped right in front of him and began to dig her small hands into the pockets.
"Tartan," she began brightly (possibly the first time she had shown any emotion at all since entering camp) while feeling along the soft collar of the gown, hand dangerously close to Marlin's neck, "is. Scottish. Do you. Play. The bagpipes?" She then started to fiddle with the cloth belt, the other hand feeling along the arms. For a horrible minute second, Marlin worried that she was going to take the belt off…
Before he knew it, he had gone as red as the tartan, eyes frozen in terror.
Someone broke out into a torrent of unrestrained laughter behind them.
"Marlin!" Vince wheezed in his merriment, "Look at yourself!"
It was not his day. He'd fallen off a harpy, been hit with one pumpkin, two onions and a metal slipper, been chased a child of the war god while wearing a tartan dressing gown and now he had nearly been winded by this midget who had just put Mozart to shame and who was asking him whether he played the bagpipes or not.
"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…….." he groaned, mind blank, trying not to make any sudden movements. He looked to his side and gave his laughing siblings and Clarisse the evil eye. Thesi seemed as if his face was about to crack up faster than a china plate in an earthquake, chewing gum being churned up with a fervour like never before.
He was having chewing gum for breakfast?
Marlin had seen it all now.
Chiron coughed uncomfortably. "I hope I'm not interrupting anything," he began irritably, which only made Vince, Natascha, Karmen, Matthias, Caitlin, Clarisse, Thesi, Thalia and Percy giggle all the more, "but, um, what would you like your name to be?"
Much to Marlin's relief, the girl lost interest in his dressing gown and ran over to Thalia to poke at the rock band badges fastened to her jacket instead.
"HEY!" the half-blood scolded, glowering at her in such a wild way with her electric eyes that it seemed to brand the word, 'FREAK!' on the girl's forehead.
The girl was still not deterred. "Anyone who plays namby-pamby classical crap is not allowed to touch these ultimate symbols of musical power. So PISS OFF."
The girl's eyes widened at the words, 'musical power'.
Chiron was about to give up for good. "If you don't mind-"
"Tchaikovsky." She said abruptly. "That will. Be. My name."
Thalia and Percy exchanged glances.
"Ooooookay…" Percy mumbled. "How about we call you Chai for short?"
The girl gave him a vacant stare. "No. Tchaikovsky."
"Chai."
"Tchaikovsky."
"Chai!"
"Tchaikovsky. Is. My name."
Percy rolled his eyes. "Well, I'm just going to call you Chai whether you like it or not."
The girl still pinned him with her eyes. "Tchaikovsky."
"Do you have a surname?" Chiron asked eventually.
The girl blinked, and thought. "Lutoslawski?"
Thalia groaned. "What's with the composers? Seriously!"
"Okay then. You're called Chai Luto," Percy told the girl sternly, "and you're not to go around camp giving us this classical music crap anymore. Got that?"
She shook her head. "Tchaikovsky Lutoslawski." Then Tchaikovsky nodded in contentment with herself. "Yes."
Instantly, the symbol of a lyre glowed above her head.
Chapter 6 End.
AN: A pretty weird chapter, I must admit. Please tell me what you think of Chai, the little dear. Also, a random announcement…I now declare Vince, Caitlin, Marlin, Natascha, Karmen, Thesi and Matthias to be the unofficial fanon members of the Demeter cabin. That means, if you wish, you can make them appear in your fics! But ONLY as the Demeter cabin members. And, of course, that also means you can make Clarisse and her posse beat the crap out of them if you wish… --;;