Hit The Road, Jack
January 1969
Eric Wycliffe hated keeping watch.
Yes, he understood the importance of it, yes, he knew that the Bronze Dragon was still getting necessary treatment and repairs after it broke down long before he had even stepped foot into this secluded encampment, blah blah blah, but GODS, what a drag. Yeah, Apollo knocked up his mom and went flying off soon thereafter to do the same elsewhere, and yeah, all kids of Apollo were a more than pretty decent shot with arrows and stuff, and yeah, he knew that he was pretty exceptional when it came to that. But, the waiting for something and anything to happen under the way too hot afternoon sun would kill him sooner than a one-eyed giant.
It didn't help matters that he was stationed with Harriet Yew.
"...and all I'm saying is that it's a huge conspiracy. No way he's still alive. At the end of the Strawberry Fields Song, John says, "I buried Paul." "I buried PAUL!." Harriet poked his arm with her quiver with a little more force than Eric was expecting. If it wasn't for the fact he was leaning on the trunk, he would've fallen off the tree.
"He says, "cranberry sauce", Yew," Eric while yawning. He wiped his eyes with his fist. This would only go on for another few hours.
"I buried Paul," Harriet said, brown eyes with not the slightest hint of sleep-deprivation within them. "Exactly."
Eric gave a noncommittal grunt.
"And not just that," she started again. Eric interrupted before she could continue with her jabbering.
"Where did you hear all of this anyway?" Eric loved the Beatles himself and he hadn't heard anything about anyone's death. In fact, he didn't know anyone who was that much obsessed with anything, much less him. Screaming fans at a light show were one thing. Normal people with normal lives were another and damn it all if we wouldn't try to make is strange life a little normal.
"I have a Londoner penpal," Harriet said proudly. "She's with the times. They have a school club dedicated to spreading the news that Paul died three years ago in a car accident."
"He isn't dead," Eric said. There was no point in attempting an opposing view. Harriet's opinion was always right as far as she was concerned.
"He is!" she continued. She kept on with this until Eric started to close his eyes. With that mouth of hers, no doubt Harriet would've spread the news from the New York Island to California by the time the year was up.
He wasn't sure when he finally fell asleep, but it only felt like seconds later that Harriet was slapping him in the ear yelling at him to wake up for the gods sake.
"Christ, Yew!" Eric said, one of the few times he's ever risen his voice to her, or to anyone. Things change when someone slaps you awake on the ear. "What was that for?"
Harriet seemed unaffected by his outburst. "Two things. Chiron wants cabin leaders at the Big House for a meeting."
Eric was confused. "I'm not the cabin leader."
"You're honorary cabin leader since Wilkie Queens got into Amherst and never looked back." She paused before spitting. "The bastard."
"I'm not even second in command." Eric said.
"Yeah, well, John Chester Williams had a death in the family so he's in Pennsylvania somewhere. He liked you. So, you're next in command." She shrugged her shoulders as if saying "What canya do?"
Eric sighed, giving a weak smile. "It'll be a disaster."
"Don't I know it," she said. "Now get off this tree before I shove you off." She raised her fists as a demonstration.
"What was the second thing?" Eric asked. He placed an arrow back into his quiver and swung it around his back. He climbed down the trunk, both hands wrapped around a branch preparing to jump off. "What else?"
"You're used-to-be is back." Harriet sighed as if sensing his impending doom. "Your crazy ex."
"She is?" He said, scared for all the inevitable Hades that would come for him.
"Yeah," she said. "Amy's back."
Every delegate of a god was required to attend an important meeting, the head of each cabin. However, because of many heated disputes and flinging of putrid fruit throughout the years, it was decided that since there could be no true "Head of House" where Cabin 13 was concerned, because of all the other campers there. Arguments were settled with "any kid of a certain parent can come on account of Hecate threatening the camp with impalement on grounds of discrimination". All majors were required to attend. Not all the minors came, but those who did couldn't be put out.
They gathered in the biggest room of the Big House. Felix of Hermes, Tilde Cruz of Athena and Callie of Ares (second in command), and Christina Berniss of Nike were all talking in a corner going from conversations about Capture the Flag to heated discussions about who did what to whom and why and they were going to make them pay. Barbara O'Malley of Aphrodite sat in the only chair in the room, a rocking one, and flipped through a Vogue magazine idly while chewing and blowing bubble gum. Luke Wainwright of Hephaestus, who always had something better to do, stood in the center of the room with his large arms crossed daring anyone to say anything about it. Dick Branch of Demeter and Thomas of Asclepius chatted about the healing properties of various plants, each with a notebook in hand to add points (Angelica butted in occasionally to add things about honey). Mason of Euphrosyne (who only came because of Angelica) and Xavier of Melinoe (who only came because Shannon insisted) sat across from each other in mutual silence while Shannon of Kymopoleia filled it with random facts about space and the ocean and the far off year of 2001. The inseparable Arceneaux twins of Hecate and Wes Kennedy of Iris crouched near the ground silently as if waiting for something to happen that only they knew about. After five minutes of them using up the room's oxygen, Chiron and his ever present companion, Obed, came inside, both followed immediately with Euterpe, the muse of obnoxiously happy music. She practically waltzed in with her long red hair, matching her long red-striped shifts dress.
As if on cue, she pulled out a brown violin from thin air and started fiddling with it.
Euterpe was a bit of an enigma; all her moods were based on different types of music. That summer she was invested in the blues made everyone else's summer unbearable. The fall break she really went into the classics like Mozart and Bach and the like, the camp was vibrating until the early morning with nonstop symphonies. The swing music era of the '20s was worse (anyone within a twenty feet of her would start lindy-hopping for hours without being able to stop. Watching his feet dance without his control for half a day had been enough for Obed to reconsider his ban on hating others.
Chiron, who had been wearing a grim expression since he walked in, sighed deeply and rubbed a hand down his face. "Euterpe, this is neither the time nor the place-"
"What was that?" she asked loudly over her ever-perfected rendition of "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen. A collective groan rose from the reluctant audience.
And she wonders why the Muses kicked her out, Obed wondered incredulously.
Chiron shook his head while Obed looked around trying his best to ignore that irritatingly catchy tune.. "Is everyone here?"
"Arnica isn't," came Thomas' voice.
"Arnica never comes," replied Luke looking as stoic as ever.
"Megan isn't here either," Tilde pointed out.
"Darling, it's by design," answered Barbara annoyingly. A few others nodded. Not everyone prefered it when she came.
"And the representative of Apollo?" Chiron scanned the group.
"I'm here!" The sound of pounding feet running up the stairs became known. In a few seconds, Eric found himself in the room, drenched in sweat, his quiver swinging from his back to his front. He rubbed his forehead, slicking black hair back. He bent over, hands on his knees to catch his breath. "I'm here."
"You smell of roadkill," Barbara sniffed, looking down at him through her thick eyelashes although she was the one sitting down.
"He smells of excitement," Shannon corrected "matter-of-factly". Barbara glared at her mouthing "retard" although she had already turned around to talk to Mason. She met the frightening dark eyes of Xavier instead and quickly went back to her magazine.
Obed walked up to a wall in the room, a sorry shade of not quite brown, with multi-colored chalk in hand. He loudly kicked the wall twice to get everyone's attention since he couldn't clap. Everyone gradually grew silent under the fourth verse of "Surfin' Bird". Obed's hands started shaking in irritation. "That means you, Euterpe. Shut up!"
She didn't. She seemed to be entranced by herself.
Chiron sighed again, naturally expecting the worst. Granted, she wasn't the worse co-director he's ever had.
Obed, fed up, marched down to Euterpe and snatched the violin from her grip. He carefully placed it down on the floor before kicking it to the other side of the room, hard it enough for it to go sliding but soft enough for it to not shatter on impact with the nearest wall.
Euterpe looked down in shock, her face growing as red as her dress in anger.. "Young man-"
"There are rules here, Euterpe," he started in all seriousness. His mop of curly black hair barely reached her shoulders, but in that moment he seemed much taller and much older. "When a camp meeting is called, we deal with the domestic before going into the more important things. For anything to get done, everyone needs to cooperate and quiet down so things can happen. We have rules for reasons. You might not remember 1930, but I do."
Euterpe rolled her eyes and muttered something that sounded like "those years weren't all bad". "You'd figure for a camp this place would be a bunch more exciting." Her long red hair grew a shorter and frizzier not-quite-blonde and her red dress faded into a multicolored patchy dress thing with beads to boot. She grabbed rimless red-tinted eyeglasses out of nowhere and put them on, humming a folky sad tune.
The camp leaders watched on. They all knew that Obed and Euterpe had their spats; what happened was nothing new. But Obed had never seemed so serious before.
"Alrighty then," Obed said, standing back at the wall. He held up a blue chalk. "Questions. Domestics. Lay 'em on me."
"I've gotta question for Ms. Camp Director," Wes asked from the back. He fiddled with his long blonde hair, braiding it messily He turned to Euterpe with an innocent smile on his face pale freckled. "Does Janis Joplin raid your wardrobe."
The twins cracked up and other kids joined in. Euterpe blew a kiss his way and Wes stood up and started yodeling for a few seconds before stopping and looking around confused.
Obed rubbed his hand down his face. "Question privileges are up. Domestics?"
"We need new beds," Felix offered. "Somethin' real primo, real high class. Kids are always carvin' messages into the legs and wearin' them out."
Obed, already finished writing down all the different cabin names, wrote under Hermes. "New beds. Good reasons. Why don't you ask Luke?" Felix's best friend was head of the Hephaestus; he was nothing if not a builder.
Felix refused to look at Luke (who never changed position).
"Felix was drawing designs on Luke's girl- Jacqueline." Barbara broke the silence, flipping through her new magazine, another Vogue. "Jackie's been going steady with Luke for a year. Too bad she's easier than a six piece puzzle."
Luke never changed position, but his eyes started getting watery.
"Okay, so Luke's off the table. We'll try to get the beds. Anyone else?"
"Liesel and Marie are allergic to strawberries?" Dick's blue eyes were full of worry. It was no secret he was fond of both of them.
"Whaddya want be to do? Change their bodies?" Obed said, a victim of the girls' disdain and abuse. He didn't too much care for them, but he had to be that word Mr. C always said he should become. Diplomatic. "I can't help that."
"That's the thing," Dick said, his voice dropping lower. "They weren't always. It's all they ever eat and now they can't eat anything."
"Then introduce them to the wonders of citrus. Or cranberries. We have cranberry vines, don't we Mr. C?"
"Not since the Kraken," he said.
"Oh," he said. He shuddered, remembering. "That was bad. No more cranberries."
That's how it went for twenty minutes. It was relatively calm, as far as meetings were concerned. Many were biding their time, eager to find out what had made Chiron so grave, Obed so serious, and Euterpe more obnoxious than usual with that neverending humming that had only gotten louder.
The wall was covered and Tilde and Christina were jotting it down so they could enforce them in due time. Eric looked around, helplessly acting like he knew what he was doing and people would believe it because he really didn't want to be here. He didn't know what the Apollo cabin wanted. He didn't get into politics for the very reason that he wasn't good at this kind of stuff.
"Is that all," Obed asked. When no one answered, he motioned to Chiron. "Thomas and Callie, you had something you wanted to say?" He looked around. "Where's Kieran?"
"He said he'd be late," Dick offered.
Callie and Thomas had already discussed what had happened with them, Amanda, and Megan (the latter who refused to come against all bargaining). This time, they would say it front of everyone else. However, they didn't know what Kieran had to do with anything.
Callie and Thomas walked up the front of the room and turned around. Thomas desperately tried to ignore the nineteen pairs of eyes staring at him and prayed that this would get over with soon.
"Amanda Moore has been having dreams," Thomas began. His willed his fingers to stop fidgeting. "Dreams about her being on fire and burning to death. Graphic things like that. We got Megan to get inside her head and see for herself and she seemed quite troubled by it as well."
"As everyone knows," Callie took over, "children of Ares aren't partial to dreams. Everyone dreams, yes, but nothing we can usually remember. And, half-blood dreams in general are usually signs." She paused. "She said there was this man, this tall and dark man that was setting her on fire."
She stopped and turned to the door where Kieran walked in. His longsleeved black gingham shirt was soaked through and his dark red hair was shiny with water. Everyone turned to him and he looked back with unblinking eyes. He gulped. "I think the naiads hate me." He held out a conch shell. "And I really hate this."
"Hey!" Larry or Lawrence said. "What's the Deathy Boy doing here?"
Xavier raised his eyebrows at this and a corner of his mouth jumped up as if he was surprised and pleased at the change in position.
"Chiron asked me to come," Kieran said, brushing off the insult. He walked up to the front of the room and stood beside Thomas and Callie. "A magic conch shell fell from the sky and landed in front of me. If that isn't a sign that things have gone wrong, I don't know what is." He glanced at Angelica and his face went as red as Euterpe's hair. "I'm sorry about the book. Your book." He cleared his throat. "It got wet. I'm sorry."
Angelica smiled and said it was alright.
An argument from the back started over a dispute on how this was important and if there was no prophecy, then no deal. Chiron told them to settle down to no avail.
Eric stood in the back listening to what the kids in the front were saying. A magic conch shell and dreams of fire were strange enough (and the dreams of a halfblood were never to be taken lightly). But, something itched at the back of his mind. Something that happened when he was at his mom's place over Christmas.
"I have something to say," he began quietly. However, with all the chatter, no one heard him. He tentatively raised a hand and cleared his throat. "I've got something to say."
"Watch out, kids," Larry or Lawrence said. "He's got something to say," said the other. The two of them and Wes cackled.
Eric turned red and Chiron nodded at him to continue, looking more worried than before. "Around Christmas time, my grandmother, cousins, and I were standing outside and watching the stars after the Apollo 8 broadcast and we saw a Python."
Chiron's eyebrows raised and his old eyes went dark at that, but Felix laughed and said, "You gettin' us scared because you saw a big snake? They're ever'where where I come from."
"I'm not from redneck country." Felix bristled at that. "I'm from New York. And it wasn't a big snake," Eric insisted. "My old man, Apollo, killed him thousands of years ago. He was taller than four me standing on top of each other and wings to boot. He was a dragon, looked like. Monsters die and come back and he came back and my folks saw it." He made gestures with his hands trying to explain. "They don't see through the Mist. Never have. The Mist is supposed to block things like that, but it didn't this time."
Obed has been writing this down. "So, magical conch shell, dreams of fire, creepy tall guy, and the Mist is fading." Obed tapped the chalk against the wall. "It's all looking very touch-me-not."
"But before it gets any worse, he have to touch it," Chiron said. A snicker came from the crowd. "I mean handle it. I mean...not a word."
Euterpe sat in thought, her humming stopping when she heard about the Mist. "It's fading? That's never happened."
"It may be time to contact the Oracle," Chiron said. If anything, the lines on his forehead got deeper.
"And a questing we may go," Obed said solemnly. "With enough monsters, no way the mortals will think it's just acid forever." An explosion came from the front of the room and covered everyone in yellow dust. The smell of sulfur filled the room and Obed turned to Larry, Lawrence, and Wes at the back of the room, his face coated in yellow. "Really? A stink bomb? Juvenile." He started to turn around before he looked back, somehow looking into all three pairs of their eyes at the same time. "Watch your backs."
The room cleared out shortly after that. Not everyone knew what to do next. Christina and Tilde went to enforce the new rules and changes while the Terrible Trio and Barbara O'Malley went wherever they last wreaked havoc. Others went to fulfil daily camp duties, but the rest just stood, not knowing where to go from there.
Kieran rocked nervously back and forth on his heels. He looked up at Callie and Thomas who both stood as awkwardly as he. "So," he said, dragging it out for a few seconds. "I've got a magic conch shell."
Callie looked more annoyed than not. She didn't know Kieran that well and she wasn't exactly sure if she considered him a friend. That was up to debate. "What does this "magic conch shell" of yours do anyway?"
Kieran bit his lip and looked down at the orange shell. He sighed and held the mouth up to his and blew. It trumpeted and bellowed. It was the ungodly love child of euphony and discord. And it only got louder.
All of a sudden, a massive water spout shot out the ground in front of them and water swung all over, soaking them until they were dripping with salt water. Thomas screeched, Callie ducked, and Kieran stared wistfully at the rainbow it formed with the sunlight.
"Ugh!" Callie twisted her hair and squeezed sea water out of her hair. "A little warning next time." She stepped to her left so Thomas could collapse and cough out the salt. She slapped his back and stopped when he gave a thumbs up while he was catching his breath.
Kieran shrugged. "Maybe."
"Well," Callie said, rubbing the water out of her eyes. "I guess we should all talk to Amanda and Megan about this. Like it or not, they're key to this mystery."
Kieran nodded, helping Thomas to his feet. Thomas shielded his eyes and looked down the field. He spoke in his now raspy voice. "Is that…? Oh no." He groaned. "It's Amy." The girl was wearing a black leather jacket with dark denim pants with sunglasses to boot. She looked across the camp before noticing the black boy looking at her. He flinched.
"Who's Amy?" Kieran and Callie asked simultaneously.
Thomas turned his back to Amy and pushed Callie and Kieran in the other direction, away from her. "She's dangerous. Don't make eye contact."
"I always thought you were nice to everyone," Callie said. Kieran hummed in agreement.
"Don't make eye contact!" Thomas insisted. They headed to Cabin 13.
Meanwhile, in the Ares cabin, Amanda clutched her head in pain, hissing underneath the noise and pain in her head. The noise. The chanting. It didn't end. It wouldn't end.
Tha ypárxei fo̱tiá.
Aíma tha ríxei san to neró.
Kanéna páv̱ei orgí̱ mou.
Den kríma gia ti̱ thanáto̱si̱.
The chant I made up in the midst of a Math test is:
Θα υπάρξει φωτιά.
Αίμα θα ρίξει σαν το νερό.
Κανένα παύει οργή μου.
Δεν κρίμα για τη θανάτωση.
or
There will be fire.
There will be blood.
None will cease my ire.
No pity for the slaughtered.
There's a reason I don't write poetry. Fingers crossed that I create a better prophecy for the Oracle.
And, for the conspiracy at the beginning, rumors started around here but didn't get "conspiracy level" until Abbey Road. Yet, Harriet Yew, no doubt, could have spread it.
And, Beatles were the like the 60s One Direction or N'SYNC. The people then perceived it as some basic boy band. One of the first of its kind, but a boy band nonetheless; nowhere near the "gods of rock" as people now claim to the people back in the day. My opinion, but Jimi Hendrix, the Supremes, Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys (a better boy band to me), and James Brown of that time smashed them musically, but my opinion is my opinion.