Thank you for all the reviews! You are amazing.
And now... for a long chapter.
V LEO
THE GOAT STARED UP AT THEM AND SNORTED.
"I just have one question," Piper said as she stared at it. "Why would a goddess have a goat as a sacred animal? I mean, if you wanted something disgusting you might as well choose a pig… or one of my half-siblings…"
Jason scratched his head. "Maybe this goddess is just really into ordinary livestock," he suggested.
The goat brayed and turned, clippity-clopping down the paved road. None of the townsfolk seemed to find it out of place.
"So do we just follow it?" Leo asked.
"I think so," Piper replied. The three demigods scampered after their goat leader, following it through the winding paths of Ithaca.
Either the goat had a very good reason for doubling back twice, pausing at a crossway for five minutes, and stopping to chew on paper coffee cups every time they passed by a coffee shop, or it had no idea where it was going.
At the third Starbucks the demigods decided to get some donuts. Sitting on a bench outside, staring at the goat viciously shred apart a discarded coffee cup, Piper decided to voice the thought they were all thinking: "Maybe we have the wrong goat. Or maybe the lady in Leo's dream was wrong herself."
Leo shrugged, sipping from his lemonade beverage. "It's possible," he decided, his eyes trailing over to a group of girls standing across the street, giggling and crushing over Jason. Piper seemed to notice them and slipped her hand into her boyfriend's. This did nothing to discourage them.
"Goat's on the move," Jason informed. True enough, the animal had decided his coffee cup was dead enough already and was moving away. Leo groaned and got back to his feet, stretching over-dramatically.
"And the chase continues," he said as they tailed their leader.
The goat rounded a corner and walked up to an old stone building. Graffiti written in Greek decorated its walls, and the windows were boarded up with decaying wood and rusty nails. A small stairway led to the wooden front door, which was attached only by one hinge. Vines crawled over the building, and a rickety gray gate surrounded the perimeter. A crumbling white sign displayed something in Greek, and underneath it in English read, O y eus M se m. The goat squeezed under a gaping hole in the fence and leaned against the building wall, snuggling against it like it wanted to cuddle.
Piper squinted. "What does the sign say?" she asked.
Jason walked up to it and scraped off a bit of moss with the back of his hand. "Odysseus Museum," he read.
"Obviously," Leo said. "But then why does it look like the town got an upgrade and bullied this building out?"
Piper shrugged, finishing her bagel. "I guess it doesn't really matter as long as we get our answers," she said. The three demigods glanced up at the imposing front steps leading of the crumbling white building.
"Are you sure we have to go in there?" Jason asked uneasily.
"Because obviously we can fight gods, giants and monsters, and be wimpy about entering a failing building," Leo said. "Come on, guys, this place has just challenged our honour!" He purposefully strode over to the gate door, which fell off its hinges when he pushed forward on it. He glanced back at his friends hesitantly, who shrugged unhelpfully. The demigods climbed the steep stairway to the front door.
"Hello?" Leo called, poking his head inside. "Anyone home?"
"Just go in," Piper said, trying to elbow her way past him. This caused the front door to snap right off its sole hinge and drop Piper forward, crashing into Leo, who tumbled embarrassingly to the floor. Jason, surprised, tripped over Piper's legs and fell on top of them.
"Nice," someone commented.
The demigods quickly scrambled to their feet. There stood a girl their age in a simple white apron, a box full of antiques tucked under her arm, a cleaning rag held in the other. She peered over them with raised eyebrows, like, Seriously?
"Oh," said Jason. "Hey."
"Let me guess," she said. She spoke with an accent. "Americans?"
Leo tried for an award-winning grin. "You got it!" he said.
The girl rolled her eyes and walked away.
"Wait!" Piper called, and the three of them scrambled after her. She didn't turn or slow down. "Do you know why this place is so…?"
"Run-down?" the girl completed, walking into a new room. It was completely empty. "Is that the word you'd use?"
Leo shrugged. "Possibly," he admitted.
Jason elbowed him. "What happened?" he asked politely.
"The other museum happened," she explained, passing her cleaning rag over a cracked window. "They were so big and new, and we slowly ran out of business. The House of Odysseus and Other Greek Heroes, it's called. After a few months we had to close. They're tearing this place down in a week and building a few houses on the property." She stopped and turned to face them. "I'd recommend you leave now. Maybe you can go to the other museum." She seemed really upset. This place must have meant a lot to her.
"But the goat led us here," Piper said.
The girl frowned as if trying to figure the crazy Americans out, but decided that it was past her human capabilities and left. "Wait!" Leo called. "Did Odysseus live here three millennia ago or something?" he asked.
The girl turned and laughed bitterly. "Odysseus? Odysseus and all those other Greek myths make for good tourist traps, but the 'hero' never existed." She shook her head at them. "Greek mythology… is just mythology." She glared at the trio coldly for a moment, and then headed for a staircase leading to an upper level.
Leo whistled. "Okay. Then obviously my entire life is just a figment of someone's imagination." He turned to his friends. "So our answers are somewhere inside this decaying old building that used to be a museum? Sounds simple enough."
Ba-ah-ah.
The demigods turned to find the goat sitting at the room's doorway, waiting for them patiently. Leo had to resist the urge to pat it on the head.
"How did it get inside?" Jason asked.
"The door fell off, remember?" Piper reminded him.
"Plus it's a goddess's pet," Leo added. "Maybe its got superpowers."
The goat sneezed and walked out the doorway.
It led the demigods to the very back of the building, where the eradication of the museum wasn't as strong. A few paintings still hung on the walls, and a couple of artefacts remained on display.
The goat stopped abruptly, causing Piper to stop suddenly as well. Leo ran into her, and Jason tripped over them both.
"Again?" he grumbled, and the demigods untangled themselves and got to their feet. They were at the feet of a relatively short statue of a man wearing a simple white tunic. He gazed up at the sky, as if (very dramatically) praying for the gods' wisdom and knowledge to bestow upon him. In one hand he held a globe of what the Greeks thought the earth looked like three millennia ago, in the other an astrolabe.
"Leo?" Jason started. "Isn't that—?"
"Yeah," he replied, pulling his astrolabe and the crystal from his tool belt. He compared the two. They were almost identical.
The goat bleated.
"Yeah, yeah, good boy," said Leo distractedly. He poked the statue's astrolabe, wondering if somehow it had special properties. Behind him, Jason was scowling at the goat that was trying to eat his pants leg, and Piper was trying not to laugh.
His eyes skimmed down to the bottom of the statue, to the base. He frowned, thinking there was something wrong about its dimensions. It wouldn't have to be so big, unless the marble was somehow lighter, or…
He pressed his palm to the base. There was a mechanical gear system, and behind it, an empty space. It was a door.
Leo grinned. He was so good.
The gears spun under his command. They were millennia old, and it took lots of concentration to keep them from failing completely. A loud click! was audible, and both the other demigods and the goat froze.
One wall of the base swung open.
Leo turned to his friends. "Tell me I'm not amazing," he said. He proceeded to stick his hand inside.
"Leo—!" Piper tried to shout a warning, but his fingers had already closed around whatever was inside. He tugged it out.
She seemed relieved. "Leo, don't do that. There could have been a trap that cut your hand off or something."
He waved the thought away. "Nah. That trap was too old to work. It was there, though, so half points for trying." He took his first good look at what he held in his hand. "Hmm. A pointy-thingy," he noticed. "And a piece of paper."
Jason frowned in thought. "But wouldn't parchment become so brittle in there after so many millennia?" he asked.
Leo thought about it. "You're right." He spread a hand over the paper, thinking. Then it hit him. "Piper, give me your sword," he instructed.
"Why?" she asked, but did so anyway. Leo took a glance at the Celestial Bronze and the parchment and discovered its secret.
"It's encrusted," he explained. "That's how it survived so long."
"But… wasn't Odysseus normal?" Piper wondered. "Like, not a demigod? How would he know of Celestial Bronze?"
"He was a legacy," Jason explained. "His mom was the granddaughter of Hermes, I think." He shrugged. "Either way, everyone's related to everybody somehow in mythology."
Leo tucked the parchment and the smaller device away in his tool belt. "You aren't going to read it?" Piper asked him.
He shook his head. "Later. When we're at the ship, where there's a less likely chance of monster assault."
"Actually," Jason started, "there have been a relatively larger number of attacks than usual ever since the smokescreen and the monster-attack warner-thingamajig was destroyed by that dragon creature."
"Okay," Leo amended, "where there's supposed to be less attacks. Come on." They headed back to the entrance, the goat tailing behind them, bleating and braying.
The girl was waiting for them. "Hope you have a wonderful day," she told them sarcastically. "I would open the door for you, but… oh, look. It's on the floor. Thank you for that."
Piper tried to smile for her. "Don't worry," she told the girl. "Things will get better."
She rolled her eyes and muttered something under her breath. It sounded like, "Ilithios." Leo was vaguely aware it meant 'idiot' in Greek.
The goat jumped down the short stairway to the lawn, where it began nibbling delicately at the top of the grass. The demigods waved goodbye to it (okay, Leo waved goodbye and Piper rolled her eyes at him and the goat), and they began to walk back to the harbour.
On the way, Leo noticed the girls from Starbucks again, fan-girling over Jason. He poked Piper on the arm. "Don't look now, but you've got competition," he told her. She turned and gave him a seriously? look.
"Really?" she asked him.
"Dudes, they're approaching," he continued anyway. The four girls kept trying to push each other forward, as if they wanted to see their friends suffer but not them themselves. Eventually they got over the giggles and managed to make it over.
"Hey," the first one said, winking, and her friends burst into laughter. "'Sup?"
Piper smiled kindly. "We're doing just fine. You?"
"Good," one of the other girls said. "Americans?"
They nodded, and the girls burst out laughing.
"That's crazy we're Americans too," one of them said. She grabbed Jason's arm. "What a coincidence."
He jerked away really fast. "That's wonderful," he said. "Come on, guys. Let's go."
"We can come too!" one of the girls offered brightly, and they started tailing the demigods.
Piper frowned. "I don't think that's such a good idea," she said.
One of the girls slipped her arm through Leo's. "We can totally hang out!" she cried. "It would be so much fun. And when we leave we can email to stay in touch, because cell phones are way too mainstream."
"Like trends," said her friend. "You've gotta ignore them and be true"—she took a moment to think about it—"…to yourself."
The harbour was approaching. They needed to lose these guys.
Jason was quick. "Yeah. So why don't we trade email addresses and go our own ways?"
One of the girls smiled soothingly. "Later," she told him, placing a hand on his arm. He didn't move away. Piper narrowed her eyes.
"How about some tea?" one of the girls offered. "We can have some tea. I know the best place in town."
"Yeah," said Leo, looking at his friends to see if they were cool with it. "Tea sounds great, actually."
Piper hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah," she agreed casually. "Tea is great, but… I actually prefer coffee."
The girl at Leo's elbow gasped. She slipped away and placed both hands on Piper's shoulders. "Do not become a player to life," she told her. "Set your own path. Be different. Do not let people make decisions for you."
Piper nodded. "You know what? You are absolutely right."
The girl laughed. "I am, aren't I? I am such a good role model."
"You totally are," Jason agreed.
"You know?" said the girl holding on to him. "I love me. I love being different!"
"Preach it, live it," Leo agreed, and they fist-bumped.
Piper smiled, but it looked forced. "So obviously you thrift shop?" she said.
One of the girls nodded. "Sometimes I even thrift shop and design my own clothes," she said. "Bedazzles, glitter, sequins… that fun stuff!" She leaned over toward her as if she was about to tell Piper a secret. "My favourite colour is red. You know why?"
"Colour of roses?" Jason guessed.
Leo frowned. "Colour of fire?" he tried.
She shook her head, smiling uncannily. "Nope," she told him.
It happened so fast. She lunged, fangs snarling and claws extending, and Piper swung her sword in a motion that neatly cut halfway through her chest. She shrieked horribly, falling to her knees before disintegrating into golden dust.
Her sisters snarled, and suddenly they weren't ordinary American hipsters anymore. Their hair was made of green and red fire, flickering across their pallid white faces. Their left leg was made of Celestial bronze—the other cloven-hooved and furry, like a goat's. Long fangs extended from their top gums, and their bitten fingernails suddenly turned sharp and deadly. Leo saw their clothes as ripped and torn, slashed and destroyed over months of the struggle to survive.
Vampires.
"Now I feel like an idiot," said Leo.
That's because you are one, Leo. That's because you are one.
-o-O-o-
Slenderniece-Daughter of Nyx: Really? Rick? Well, maybe I am him, and a twelve-year-old Canadian girl is just my cover story. (In my defense: I HAVE A LATE BIRTHDAY. ALMOST THIRTEEN.)
M0RKIESTAR: I totally agree with you. This story SHOULD be more popular.
Guest: Yeah, I tried to make it as similar as I could to Rick's writing. (Meaning FREAKING AWESOME!)
Agent of Chaos: Yes, that is a review. (*sarcasm* No, actually it's a goat.)
-o-O-o-
I think the awesome length of this story deserves a couple more reviews.
