You have a strange way to view things son of Poseidon, Athena thought. She opened her mouth to start reading but was cut off by a bright light shining in the room in front of everyone.
As the light subsided they saw a woman that the Greek demigods and Poseidon recognized as Sally Jackson. She held a baby version of Percy in her hands. Next to her was Will Solace, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, and Tyson.
Jason jumped up and drew his sword. As did the other Roman demigods. Jason tried to attack Tyson when his strike was blocked by Riptide. Percy looked Jason in the eyes and shook his head. Percy wasn't mad that he attacked. They didn't know Tyson. Percy was about to tell Jason who Tyson was when they heard a deep rumbling sound and felt a small earthquake.
Percy dropped Riptide and turned to Tyson with his arms wide open. There were protests from the Romans. Tyson tackled Percy scooping him in a massive bear hug. "Big brother, it is good to see you again." Percy laughed at Tyson's enthusiasm.
"It is great to see you too Tyson, but can you put me down. You are crushing me." Percy said breathless. Poseidon smiled and realized that Percy had found Tyson in the future. Poseidon turned back to Sally. He walked up to her and said, "Hello again Sally. How have you been?" Aphrodite smiled widely as she saw Sally blush. You still love each other. She thought as they hugged.
Zeus cleared his throat. "Please introduce yourselves." He asked nicely and calmly. Hestia smiled at Zeus for his patience and kindness. Will stepped forward and said, "Will Solace, son of Apollo." Apollo smiled at his son.
"Tyson, General of the Cyclops army of Atlantis." Tyson said. The Romans upon hearing this lowered their weapons. They looked at Percy who nodded a big smile on his face.
"Rachel Elizabeth Dare. Oracle of Delphi." Rachel said stepping forward. Apollo heard her and jumped out of his seat. He walked in circles around her as if inspecting her.
"You don't look like a mummy, did you finally pass on?" Apollo said. Rachel just looked at Apollo and simply said.
"Well duh. I am a living breathing person Lord Apollo."
"I like this Oracle. She is a fiery one," Apollo said chuckling. He sat down again and waved Sally forward. She looked at Poseidon worried. Poseidon just nodded and assured her.
"Lord Zeus, my name is Sally Jackson. This here is Percy Jackson. He is Poseidon's son." She said the last part scared. Poseidon had told her everything from the oath to the prophecy. Annabeth and Thalia perked up at this and walked towards Sally.
"Percy you really were a cute baby," Thalia said. Sally looked around and saw Percy from the future standing there smiling at her.
"May I hold him Mrs. Jackson?" Annabeth asked. Sally smiled and handed the baby to Annabeth. She smiled at baby Percy who woke up and started playing with her hair. Sally walked over to Percy and looked at him with tears of joy in her eyes.
"You have grown to be a fine young man Percy. Why are we all here?" She asked. Percy sighed. He did not want his mom to ever hear about his adventures but knew he had no choice. He explained everything to her and she listened. She paled a little to hear that Hades kidnapped her. She just nodded when he was done and sat down on the couch with the others that jus arrived. Athena cleared her throat and began again.
Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately.
"No thanks to the Stolls, and their big mouths," Clarisse said as everyone snickered at her.
Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.
"You are lucky you're adorable, otherwise I would be mad at you," Annabeth said as baby Percy giggled happily.
She showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts-and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man),
Grover bleated and glared at Percy. "You would think that you would know Pan by now. After all we were there." Grover said sadly. Annabeth, Nico, Rachel, Tyson and Percy all bowed their heads in respect. They found my son? Hermes thought.
and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.
"Why do you want me to send my son there when he gets older?" Sally asked Poseidon incredulously.
"I know it might not sound safe mom but it is the safest place for me to be," Percy said. Sally sighed deciding not to argue with her son. He was stubborn at 2 years old. She didn't want to see how bad he was at 16.
Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.
"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."
"Way to welcome him to camp Annabeth," Nico remarked sarcastically. Annabeth blushed as Thalia hit Nico.
"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."
"Whatever."
"He was only trying to apologize," Frank pointed out.
"I wasn't exactly happy with him at the time. I am too prideful sometimes," Annabeth said.
"It wasn't my fault."
"Yes it was," All the demigods said. Percy just blushed in embarrassment.
She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.
"One with the plumbing?" Apollo said slowly. "I don't get it."
Artemis sighed and looked at him. "It means he used his powers to control the water and he didn't know it was him."
"Ok. I get it now," Apollo said. Artemis knew he didn't understand but she let it go.
"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.
"Who?"
"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."
"I am pretty sure Rachel isn't a what," Hazel said.
"This was before Rachel became our oracle." Percy said.
I stared into the lake, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.
"Why would we give you a straight answer? It takes all the fun out of waiting for you to understand the signs." Thalia said. Percy and Annabeth both blushed. They knew she was talking about their relationship.
I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shimmering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.
"You are to them, though some might not like you. Most of my children have treated river spirits badly." Poseidon said.
I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.
"Don't encourage them," Annabeth warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."
"Is that jealousy I hear Annabeth?" Aphrodite asked. Annabeth blushed as Thalia laughed and Sally smiled. She could tell by the way she held her baby that she was protective.
"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."
"Everything you have seen and heard the last three days and it's the naiads waving at you that makes you want to go home?" Will asked disbelieving. Percy laughed with everyone as he pulled Annabeth and his baby self towards him. They must be dating. I am happy he found someone nice, Sally thought.
Annabeth frowned. "Don't you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."
"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"
"Well we already know Octavian is, and of course there is Nico too," Thalia said.
"I am not disturbed mentally." Octavian yelled. His mistake cause when Thalia turned around, Nico, Percy, Jason, and Hazel turned there death glares on Octavian all at once. The auger quickly apologized and backed up until he hit something rather large.
"I'm sorry," He said to Tyson who smiled his big toothy grin causing said auger to wet himself and pass out.
"Oops," Everyone laughed at Tyson's childish nature and at Octavian. The so called tough guy whimpered in fear as he lay unconscious.
"I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."
"Half-human and half-what?"
"I think you know."
I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.
Sally and Poseidon smiled at each other.
"God," I said. "Half-god."
"Ding ding ding. Correct. What do you have for him Hermes," Apollo said in his best game show host voice.
Hermes handed Percy a bag of candy. "Well Apollo, Percy is now the winner of that bag of candy you tried to take from me." Apollo glared at Hermes as everyone laughed at their antics.
Annabeth nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Percy. He's one of the Olympians."
"That's ... crazy."
"Well with everything said so far it does sound a bit crazy," Nico said. Percy smiled at Nico sticking up for him. "Then again Percy is crazy," Nico finished getting a glare from Percy making him flinch.
"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"
"Some people would think they would. But it wont ever stop so why bother." Hera said putting a guilt trip on Zeus.
"But those are just-" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth.
"Actually I was wrong. It only took Percy 5 years," Chiron praised him. Percy mumbled a thanks and turned bright red.
"But if all the kids here are half-gods-"
"Demigods," Annabeth said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."
"Then who's your dad?"
"You should learn to phrase your questions better Percy," Sally said. Annabeth smiled at Sally who smiled back.
Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.
"I am sorry for being mean to you about all that," Annabeth said. "You were right I was wrong."
Thalia gasped loudly. "You just said that Percy was right and you were wrong? The apocalypse is around the corner as we speak." Thalia started laughing until she was hit with two pillows in the face leaving feathers in her hair.
"My dad is a professor at West Point," she said. "I haven't seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history."
"He's human."
"What? You assume it has to be a male god who finds a human female attractive? How sexist is that?"
"Actually he isn't being sexist Annabeth. The goddess's children aren't really that prominent in our history." Athena said. Then blushed as she realized she defended him.
"Who's your mom, then?"
"Cabin six."
"Meaning?"
Annabeth straightened. "Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle."
Athena stopped for a second to smile at Annabeth then kept reading.
Okay, I thought. Why not?
"Ok remember I thought everyone was playing a really elaborate prank on me and I didn't want to believe it." Percy defended himself quickly.
"And my dad?"
"Undetermined," Annabeth said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."
"Except my mother. She knew."
"I did know. He didn't have to tell me I saw it right away." Sally said smiling.
"Maybe not, Percy. Gods don't always reveal their identities."
"My dad would have. He loved her."
"He still does very much," Aphrodite squealed causing Poseidon to blush heavily and Sally to smile at him.
Annabeth gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.
"You mean sometimes it doesn't?"
The gods looked down and actually looked a bit guilty.
Annabeth ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about us, Percy. They ignore us."
"Do you all think that?" Zeus asked. He was afraid of the answer.
"Percy looked at him and said, "You do get better Lord Zeus. But it takes a big event to get you to understand that.
I thought about some of the kids I'd seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed, as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. I'd known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn't have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.
Apollo opened his mouth to say something but a look from Athena shut him up quick. Athena might not like it but she knew the boy was right.
"So I'm stuck here," I said. "That's it? For the rest of my life?"
"It depends," Annabeth said. "Some campers only stay the summer. If you're a child of Aphrodite or Demeter, you're probably not a real powerful force.
"Not a real force? Muffins are extremely powerful and my kids eat a lot of them," Demeter said proudly. Demeter brought forth a muffin and was about to give it to Annabeth when some black fire hit the muffin incinerating it.
"I know that muffins can't stand against fire," Hades smirked. His smile faltered as his chair was turned into a pile of wheat. Hades fell onto his butt and was whipped by the stalks of wheat.
The monsters might ignore you, so you can get by with a few months of summer training and live in the mortal world the rest of the year. But for some of us, it's too dangerous to leave. We're year-rounders. In the mortal world, we attract monsters. They sense us. They come to challenge us. Most of the time, they'll ignore us until we're old enough to cause trouble-about ten or eleven years old, but after that, most demigods either make their way here, or they get killed off. A few manage to survive in the outside world and become famous. Believe me, if I told you the names, you'd know them. Some don't even realize they're demigods. But very, very few are like that."
"So monsters can't get in here?"
Annabeth shook her head. "Not unless they're intentionally stocked in the woods or specially summoned by somebody on the inside."
"That came to a stop after the hellhound incident," Chiron assured everyone.
"Why would anybody want to summon a monster?"
"Practice fights. Practical jokes."
"Practical jokes?"
"That's a very cruel joke," Sally said. The gods and demigods agreed.
"The point is, the borders are sealed to keep mortals and monsters out. From the outside, mortals look into the valley and see nothing unusual, just a strawberry farm."
"So ... you're a year-rounder?"
Annabeth nodded. From under the collar of her T-shirt she pulled a leather necklace with five clay beads of different colors. It was just like Luke's, except Annabeth's also had a big gold ring strung on it, like a college ring.
Athena smiled at the mention of Fredrick's ring but frowned wondering what happened to make him that way.
"I've been here since I was seven," she said. "Every August, on the last day of summer session, you get a bead for surviving another year. I've been here longer than most of the counselors, and they're all in college."
"Why did you come so young?"
She twisted the ring on her necklace. "None of your business."
"You know he only wanted to help you," Hephaestus said scaring everyone around him.
"I know but at the time I didn't want to hear anything about my father. I wasn't on the best terms with him." Annabeth said.
"Oh." I stood there for a minute in uncomfortable silence. "So ... I could just walk out of here right now if I wanted to?"
"Wouldn't recommend it at the moment considering your uncles are trying to kill you," Hermes said. Sally glared at Zeus and Hades so fiercely that the two gods squirmed in their sleep. The rest of the beings in the room stared at Sally in awe.
"It would be suicide, but you could, with Mr. D's or Chiron's permission. But they wouldn't give permission until the end of the summer session unless ..."
"Unless?"
"You were granted a quest. But that hardly ever happens. The last time ..."
Her voice trailed off. I could tell from her tone that the last time hadn't gone well.
"Back in the sick room," I said, "when you were feeding me that stuff-"
"Ambrosia."
"Learn you daily demigod needs Percy. It will help you survive." Apollo said smiling.
"Yeah. You asked me something about the summer solstice."
"Still don't know how you thought he would know." Thalia muttered.
Annabeth's shoulders tensed. "So you do know something?"
"I never know what's going on. I just for you to tell me." Percy said lovingly. Annabeth smiled widely.
"Well... no. Back at my old school, I overheard Grover and Chiron talking about it. Grover mentioned the summer solstice. He said something like we didn't have much time, because of the deadline. What did that mean?"
She clenched her fists. "I wish I knew. Chiron and the satyrs, they know, but they won't tell me. Something is wrong in Olympus, something pretty major. Last time I was there, everything seemed so normal."
"Do you Greeks get to come here often?" Reyna asked. She wondered why the gods didn't pay as much attention to them.
"You've been to Olympus?"
"More time than most people," Annabeth smiled.
"Some of us year-rounders-Luke and Clarisse and I and a few others-we took a field trip during winter solstice. That's when the gods have their big annual council."
"But... how did you get there?"
"The Long Island Railroad, of course. You get off at Penn Station. Empire State Building, special elevator to the six hundredth floor." She looked at me like she was sure I must know this already. "You are a New Yorker, right?"
"How could you expect him to have all this info? Especially when he just found out whom he was." Sally said.
Annabeth blushed. "Honestly I thought he knew some of who he was."
"Oh, sure." As far as I knew, there were only a hundred and two floors in the Empire State Building, but I decided not to point that out.
"Right after we visited," Annabeth continued, "the weather got weird, as if the gods had started fighting. A couple of times since, I've overheard satyrs talking. The best I can figure out is that something important was stolen. And if it isn't returned by summer solstice, there's going to be
trouble. When you came, I was hoping ... I mean- Athena can get along with just about anybody, except for Ares. And of course she's got the rivalry with Poseidon. But, I mean, aside from that, I thought we could work together. I thought you might know something."
"Sorry to disappoint you Annie, he doesn't know much unless it deals with water." Thalia said teasing Percy. Percy just smiled because it was true.
I shook my head. I wished I could help her, but I felt too hungry and tired and mentally overloaded to ask any more questions.
"I've got to get a quest," Annabeth muttered to herself. "I'm not too young. If they would just tell me the problem ..."
I could smell barbecue smoke coming from somewhere nearby. Annabeth must've heard my stomach growl. She told me to go on, she'd catch me later. I left her on the pier, tracing her finger across the rail as if drawing a battle plan.
Annabeth laughed. "It's true. I was drawing a battle plan for capture the flag."
Back at cabin eleven, everybody was talking and horsing around, waiting for dinner. For the first time, I noticed that a lot of the campers had similar features: sharp noses, upturned eyebrows, mischievous smiles. They were the kind of kids that teachers would peg as troublemakers. Thankfully, nobody paid much attention to me as I walked over to my spot on the floor and plopped down with my minotaur horn.
The counselor, Luke, came over. He had the Hermes family resemblance, too. It was marred by that scar on his right cheek, but his smile was intact.
"Found you a sleeping bag," he said. "And here, I stole you some toiletries from the camp store."
"The only nice thing he did for him before he turned," Nico whispered angrily. Thalia was sad.
I couldn't tell if he was kidding about the stealing part.
"Nope not one bit," Hermes said proudly.
I said, "Thanks."
"No prob." Luke sat next to me, pushed his back against the wall. "Tough
first day?"
"I don't belong here," I said. "I don't even believe in gods."
"I do now," Percy said quickly.
"Yeah," he said. "That's how we all started. Once you start believing in
them? It doesn't get any easier."
The bitterness in his voice surprised me, because Luke seemed like a pretty easygoing guy. He looked like he could handle just about anything.
I wish he could have. Things would have been a lot different, Thalia thought.
"So your dad is Hermes?" I asked.
He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, and for a second I thought he was going to gut me, but he just scraped the mud off the sole of his sandal. "Yeah. Hermes."
"The wing-footed messenger guy."
"Not my worst description. But not the best either," Hermes frowned a little.
"That's him. Messengers. Medicine. Travelers, merchants, thieves. Anybody who uses the roads. That's why you're here, enjoying cabin eleven's hospitality. Hermes isn't picky about who he sponsors."
"Maybe cause I don't get a choice," Hermes said glaring at the other gods.
I figured Luke didn't mean to call me a nobody. He just had a lot on his mind.
"You ever meet your dad?" I asked.
"Once."
"He did? Was it a good meeting?" Thalia and Annabeth shook their heads sadly.
I waited, thinking that if he wanted to tell me, he'd tell me. Apparently, he didn't. I wondered if the story had anything to do with how he got his scar.
Luke looked up and managed a smile. "Don't worry about it, Percy. The campers here, they're mostly good people. After all, we're extended family, right? We take care of each other."
"Liar," Clarisse whispered furiously. She hated what Luke did to Chris.
He seemed to understand how lost I felt, and I was grateful for that, because an older guy like him-even if he was a counselor-should've steered clear of an uncool middle-schooler like me. But Luke had welcomed me into the cabin. He'd even stolen me some toiletries, which was the nicest thing anybody had done for me all day.
"I showed you around the entire afternoon," Annabeth said."True but you didn't exactly seem happy about it at all," Percy said. Annabeth blushed because it was true.
I decided to ask him my last big question, the one that had been bothering me all afternoon. "Clarisse, from Ares, was joking about me being 'Big Three' material. Then Annabeth ... twice, she said I might be 'the one.' She said I should talk to the Oracle. What was that all about?"
Luke folded his knife. "I hate prophecies."
"We all hate prophecies," Every demigod said.
"What do you mean?"
His face twitched around the scar. "Let's just say I messed things up for everybody else. The last two years, ever since my trip to the Garden of the Hesperides went sour, Chiron hasn't allowed any more quests. Annabeth's been dying to get out into the world. She pestered Chiron so much he finally told her he already knew her fate. He'd had a prophecy from the Oracle. He wouldn't tell her the whole thing, but he said Annabeth wasn't destined to go on a quest yet. She had to wait until... somebody special came to the camp."
"And you got me too," Percy said smiling. Sally smiled as well. She couldn't help but like their relationship.
"Somebody special?"
"Don't worry about it, kid," Luke said. "Annabeth wants to think every new camper who comes through here is the omen she's been waiting for. Now, come on, it's dinnertime."
The moment he said it, a horn blew in the distance. Somehow, I knew it was a conch shell, even though I'd never heard one before.
"Son of the sea god Percy." Poseidon smiled at his son.
Luke yelled, "Eleven, fall in!"
The whole cabin, about twenty of us, filed into the commons yard. We lined up in order of seniority, so of course I was dead last. Campers came from the other cabins, too, except for the three empty cabins at the end, and cabin eight, which had looked normal in the daytime, but was now starting to glow silver as the sun went down.
We marched up the hill to the mess hall pavilion. Satyrs joined us from the meadow. Naiads emerged from the canoeing lake. A few other girls came out of the woods- and when I say out of the woods, I mean straight out of the woods. I saw one girl, about nine or ten years old, melt from the side of a maple tree and come skipping up the hill.
"Were you checking out the nymphs Percy," Aphrodite asked.
Percy turned red quickly and yelled, "No I was not. I was shocked about them coming out of the trees." Annabeth laughed at him making him turn a darker shade of red.
In all, there were maybe a hundred campers, a few dozen satyrs, and a dozen assorted wood nymphs and naiads.
At the pavilion, torches blazed around the marble columns. A central fire burned in a bronze brazier the size of a bathtub. Each cabin had its own table, covered in white cloth trimmed in purple. Four of the tables were empty, but cabin eleven's was way overcrowded. I had to squeeze on to the edge of a bench with half my butt hanging off.
"We didn't want that image Percy," Jason joked. Percy laughed and the gods relaxed fully. Other than Octavian's snide remarks the demigods were getting along great.
I saw Grover sitting at table twelve with Mr. D, a few satyrs, and a couple of plump blond boys who looked just like Mr. D. Chiron stood to one side, the picnic table being way too small for a centaur.
"I can fix you a table Chiron," Hephaestus offered.
"Thank you my lord," Chiron replied.
Annabeth sat at table six with a bunch of serious-looking athletic kids, all with her gray eyes and honey-blond hair.
Clarisse sat behind me at Ares's table. She'd apparently gotten over being hosed down, because she was laughing and belching right alongside her friends.
"I was not belching," Clarisse glared. But it was lost as every laughed.
Finally, Chiron pounded his hoof against the marble floor of the pavilion, and everybody fell silent. He raised a glass. "To the gods!"
Everybody else raised their glasses. "To the gods!"
"Why thank you," Apollo said. He started to laugh but was hit hard in ribs by his sister.
"Don't you ever shut up?" Artemis said.
"I would sis but then I wouldn't be able to annoy you." Apollo shot back. Athena in order to prevent an eclipse read over them.
Wood nymphs came forward with platters of food: grapes, apples, strawberries, cheese, fresh bread, and yes, barbecue! My glass was empty, but Luke said, "Speak to it. Whatever you want-nonalcoholic, of course."
I said, "Cherry Coke."
The glass filled with sparkling caramel liquid.
Then I had an idea. "Blue Cherry Coke."
Sally smiled at her son. She noticed baby Percy playing with his future self. She smiled wider cause she could see the great young man in front of her.
The soda turned a violent shade of cobalt.
I took a cautious sip. Perfect.
I drank a toast to my mother.
Hera smiled. "Your son is very loyal to you Sally," She said to Percy's mom. Sally just smiled and agreed.
She's not gone, I told myself. Not permanently, anyway. She's in the Underworld. And if that's a real place, then someday...
"Percy, I love you, but I will not allow you to go to the underworld," Sally said sternly.
Percy looked sheepish. "Actually I had to. But I was mostly going to get you back." Sally sighed. She knew he was going to have to.
"Here you go, Percy," Luke said, handing me a platter of smoked brisket.
I loaded my plate and was about to take a big bite when I noticed everybody getting up, carrying their plates toward the fire in the center of the pavilion. I wondered if they were going for dessert or something.
"Without even taking a bite?" Hazel shook her head. Percy smiled blushing at the fact that he knew he was going to get messed with for a while.
"Come on," Luke told me.
As I got closer, I saw that everyone was taking a portion of their meal and dropping it into the fire, the ripest strawberry, the juiciest slice of beef, the warmest, most buttery roll.
Luke murmured in my ear, "Burnt offerings for the gods. They like the smell."
"You're kidding."
"Very much not. We love the smell of the sacrifices. I almost lived of it once on a dare. Didn't work out well at all." Ares said.
"Didn't work out well? You ended up in the infirmary for a week for dehydration. You still aren't up to your full strength." Apollo said. Everyone laughed at him.
His look warned me not to take this lightly, but I couldn't help wondering why an immortal, all-powerful being would like the smell of burning food.
Luke approached the fire, bowed his head, and tossed in a cluster of fat red grapes. "Hermes."
Hermes smiled happily.
I was next.
I wished I knew what god's name to say.
Finally, I made a silent plea. Whoever you are, tell me. Please.
"I will son. I promise," Poseidon said. Baby Percy heard him and turned towards him. He smiled a toothless grin and Poseidon took him into his arms and held him close. "How are you my son?"
"Dada," Baby Percy said. Sally smiled as her son said his first word.
I scraped a big slice of brisket into the flames.
When I caught a whiff of the smoke, I didn't gag.
"I hope not. I don't want to smell throw up," Hermes said snickering. Athena hit upside the head. Hermes rubbed his head cursing.
It smelled nothing like burning food. It smelled of hot chocolate and fresh-baked brownies, hamburgers on the grill and wildflowers, and a hundred other good things that shouldn't have gone well together, but did. I could almost believe the gods could live off that smoke.
When everybody had returned to their seats and finished eating their meals, Chiron pounded his hoof again for our attention.
Mr. D got up with a huge sigh. "Yes, I suppose I'd better say hello to all you brats. Well, hello. Our activities director, Chiron, says the next capture the flag is Friday. Cabin five presently holds the laurels."
The gods glared at Dionysus who tried to hide from the glares.
A bunch of ugly cheering rose from the Ares table.
"Personally," Mr. D continued, "I couldn't care less, but congratulations. Also, I should tell you that we have a new camper today. Peter Johnson."
Chiron murmured something.
"Er, Percy Jackson," Mr. D corrected. "That's right. Hurrah, and all that. Now run along to your silly campfire. Go on."
Everybody cheered. We all headed down toward the amphitheater, where Apollo's cabin led a sing-along. We sang camp songs about the gods and ate s'mores and joked around, and the funny thing was, I didn't feel that anyone was staring at me anymore. I felt that I was home.
Sally looked at Percy and saw that it was true. He was happy. She would think about sending him sooner.
Later in the evening, when the sparks from the campfire were curling into a starry sky, the conch horn blew again, and we all filed back to our cabins. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until I collapsed on my borrowed sleeping bag.
My fingers curled around the Minotaur's horn. I thought about my mom, but I had good thoughts: her smile, the bedtime stories she would read me when I was a kid, the way she would tell me not to let the bedbugs bite.
I really wish my sons could be that way about me. Ares is too crazy and I did ruin it with Hephaestus by throwing him off Olympus. Hera thought.
When I closed my eyes, I fell asleep instantly.
That was my first day at Camp Half-Blood.
I wish I'd known how briefly I would get to enjoy my new home.
"That's the chapter who is reading next?" Athena said.
"I will. I hope there is some action in the next chapter." Ares said. Athena tossed him the book. However, he missed it and it hit him hard in the nose. Ares picked up the book cursing. He looked at the title and smiled. Maybe there will be some action now, He thought. "We capture a flag." Ares read aloud.
Percy's smiled faded as he remembered the match. He was still upset about it. But at her smile and laughter, he couldn't help but smile.
"That sounds like our war games," Jason said. Everyone was eager to see how good of fighters the Greeks were. Unfortunately, that was when Octavian woke.
"Ahhhhh, Cyclopes it's going to eat get it away." He screamed. He blinked once and saw Tyson on the other side of Poseidon. He was playing with baby Percy. Octavian huffed and walked to his chair.
Ares opened his mouth and began reading.
Hey guys how's it going? I am glad to be able to post again tonight. I hope you enjoy this chapter and review when you can. I decided to bring baby Percy back upon request and sally as well. I brought Tyson and Rachel and will. They will take part in Octavian's future problems. And they are central to the series. I hope to have another chapter up tomorrow morning. Thank you and goodnight.
P.S. The Stolls will be here soon.