A/N- Here it is! Sorry it took so long! Blame school!
Disclaimer-
Me- Are you saying I don't own PJO?
Percy-Yes
Me- Are you sure
Percy- Yes
Me- Positive?
Percy- YES
Me- My whole life has been a lie!
After going to bed way too early for the demigods taste, the gods remained in the throne room discussing the current situation.
"Oh my us! So many cute couples! Zeus! I have to work on them! Please please please pl-"
"ENOUGH!" Zeus roared. "Yes, Aphrodite, you can work on the couples! *Aphrodite squealed* If you will shut up!"
"Who knew Zeus said 'shut up'? He seems more likely to say 'silence or taste my bolt' don't ya think?" Apollo stage whispered to Hermes. They chuckled earning some suspicious, some annoyed, and some amused glances.
"Back to the problem at hand" Zeus continued. "Athena, what do you think is wise?"
"The decision is simple. We must spare the demigods, like Apollo said, but keep a close eye on them. Hephaestus?"
"I installed video cameras around Olympus. Everywhere. We can access them from here"
"And why did you do this?" Zeus asked
"IagreedtohelpHermesandApollo prankHera"
"What?"
"I agreed to help Hermes and Apollo prank Hera."
"Oh, big deal. Smack! Meet here at around six- thirteen groans- and we'll watch the demigods to figure out the future. And Aphrodite, remember you cannot play matchmaker for any of the maidens."
"But Zeus!"
"Deal with it. No pairing Thalia or Rachel with anyone. Understand?"
"Fine" Aphrodite pouted before flashing to her palace. With that, the Olympians left for their own palaces to sleep for the night.
ààààààààààMeet Bob, he'll be your line breaker for today ßßßßßßßßßßßßß
*The next morning- weather- sunny, clear, warm, with a chance of flirting.*
Percy's room (The gods are watching)
"Percy. Percy. Percy!" Annabeth continued to try to wake her boyfriend who was, until very recently, MIA. Nothing worked. "Percy Triton Jackson! Wake up or you don't get blue waffles!"
Needless to say he sat upright immediately.
"Good Percy, now go brush your teeth so while I make you waffles. Understand?"
He nodded.
Around the table (Gods are still watching)
"Where's Percy and Annabeth?" Leo asked. "I want to eat!"
"Typical Leo." Jason said, smiling. He continued to talk to the Romans about his past life. (Ignoring Octavian's comments like 'You were a worse praetor then Percy' and 'You wouldn't stand a chance with Reyna anyway')
"So Sister Drew," Piper started. "All nastiness aside, how long do you think it will take for Travis to ask out Katie?" *The table suddenly shook from Aphrodite's shriek*
"Eh, they've been at camp around seven years, he's liked her for five of them, gets her attention by pranks, unsuccessful. He's just scared of being rejected. But he hasn't manned up enough to ask her so… it'll take a while."
"Ah, but Sister Drew, we now have mother's help"
"Why do you keep calling me Sister Drew? And you have an excellent point. But I will never admit I said that."
"I keep calling you Sister Drew because I feel like it. And why did you save Connor at the candy shop?"
"What is this? 20 questions?"
"Yes."
"Fine then." An evil grin spread across Drew's face. Piper did not like this grin, at all, it symbolized the end of her love-life. "So, who would you date if Jason-"Drew was (Thankfully) interrupted when Annabeth and Percy came in. Piper had never been happier to see Annabeth. She mouthed a quick thank you to the blonde standing over the waffle maker. She looked at Percy, trying to figure out how he was the great hero of Camp Half-Blood. He radiated power, like Jason did. He was strong, and even Piper could tell he could easily take Jason down in a fight. He didn't look like much, but then again, looks can be deceiving. He was hot, sure, but nothing compared to Jason in her eyes. Smelling waffles, Piper looked at Annabeth, who was adding blue food coloring to the waffles.
"WAFFLES!" Leo screamed, starling everyone. The rest of breakfast was a lot of eating, joking, and laughing, like a family.
And the gods watched their family smiling and laughing along with their children. (This makes them sound like stalkers)
àßàßàßàßàßàßà Bob's back! ßàßàßàßà
As the demigods settled into their seats the gods looked at them with amused expressions. Aphrodite was smiling so much, just thinking of the new couples.
"Aphrodite's smiling. This can't be good" Travis whispered to Katie.
"No way. It means Camp Half-Blood, or the Roman Camp, will have a new couple before the day is done"
"I Play Pinochle With A Horse." Thalia read.
I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food.
"Gee, wonder where those came from." Connor said sarcastically
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.
"Ambrosia," The demigods sighed happily.
The girl with curly blond hair hovered over me, smirking as she scraped drips off my chin with the spoon.
"Wonder who that could be." Aphrodite said looking at Annabeth along with everyone else in the room.
When she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"
I managed to choke, "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 . . ."
Nico and Thalia gasped, looked at Annabeth, then at Percy, then back at Annabeth. "Did you actually expect him to know something?"
"I know, right? What was I thinking?"
Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding.
The next time I woke up, the girl was gone.
"Aww. He already misses you" Drew and Aphrodite cooed.
A husky 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 back of his hands.
"Argus" Hera told the Romans.
When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surrounding, 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.
Many of the Greeks grinned at each other before screaming "GOAT BOY"
Zeus had been thinking how Grover seemed familiar and he just couldn't put his finger on it.
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.
"So that's how you got the horn."
"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.
"That's so deep" Katie sighed
"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.
Travis and Connor shared identical grins.
But I was too miserable to care that satyrs existed, or even minotaurs.
All that meant was my mom had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.
I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with . . . Smelly Gabe?
"No way Chiron would ever let that happen." Clarisse stated.
No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets fist. 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. 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 my chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies-but my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the ships still melting.
"Nectar" The demigods sighed again.
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."
"What would happen if a faun drank nectar?" Frank pondered.
"Well, we would burst into flames and sand would replace what were our bones" Said a certain satyr
"Ouch"
"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."
"For Percy, that's very good. For Nancy, not so much" Gwen said happily.
"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, and 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 hairs 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 turn middle-aged in a trailer park.
"EXCUSE ME?" Dionysus roared. Everyone (Even his sons) suppressed their laughter. What a fitting description.
He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in one of Gabe's poker party, except I got the feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my step father.
"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 B.
"Ah, good, Percy. 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 something I had learned from living with Gabe, it as how to tell when an adult had been hitting the happy juice.
If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a satyr.
Connor poked Percy's legs. "What the Ha-"
"He is not a satyr! Therefore, Mr. D is no stranger to alcohol!"
People applauded while rolling their eyes.
"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.
"Excuse me?"
"I meant I thought a stereotypical California Girl would have blue eyes" he laughed nervously.
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 doesn't need to. She already can." Malcolm laughed.
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.
"What was I thinking?" Percy asked
"Yeah, if Annabeth said that, we would know the world was going to end." Thalia snickered
"Why did the Mayans say the world would end in 2012 anyway?" Leo questioned
Apollo decided to speak up for his awesomeness "Me and Hermes wanted to play a prank on the-"
"I get it."
Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."
….Silence….
Then…
The throne room erupted with laughter.
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."
"Shame, Chiron, shame" Will said.
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.
"Cue the ego!" Thalia and Nico declared.
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 eyes 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.
"We've all been through that." Nyssa said
"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 on 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 you mother tell you nothing?"
People looked at the floor.
"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.
"It's awesome!" Nico yelled
"For an orientation film it is pretty awesome."Pollux agreed
"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, No! 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, can 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."
"That's so confusing!" Dakota groaned.
"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 mean 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.
"And yet you turned it down" Nico shoook his head.
"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?"
"Percy isn't a myth, he's a legend" Chris informed the gods. And hearing his new friends talk so highly of Percy, Jason couldn't help but feel a teeny, tiny bit jealous.
My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him.
"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!"
"Please" Zeus snorted.
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 wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."
"Ohhhh" Piper said.
"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 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 immortals, 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 seemed to work here. They 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?"
Aphrodite looked offended.
"You're a god."
"Yes, child."
"A god. You."
People around the room laughed.
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.
"Too many times" Dionysus sadly said.
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 a talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."
"I think he did pretty good." Will said.
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 place 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 on, 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 to 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."
"Rome!" The Romans yelled.
"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 painting, 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 and 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 or 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."
"Chocolate" was heard through the room.
And 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.
"That's creepy." Hazel shivered.
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,
"Fetlocks" Nico snickered. "Fun word."
Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."
"Jason! Think fast!" Thalia said before chucking the book at Jason's head.
"What the Hades Thals?"
"That was funner. And faster."
"Just start reading." Octavian sniffed.
