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Chapter 7

Keeping Myself And The Muffin Intact

I wasn't sure as to whether or not Chiron and Annabeth would be at the Big House instead of breakfast, but they were both there along with, to my great surprise, Mr. D.

The wine God lazed about on the porch next to Chiron, both seated around their usual pinochle table, though neither held a hand of cards. Chiron was leaning back in his wheelchair facade, hands clasped in front of his face pressing lightly to his pursed lips. It was a rare expression I'd seen him wear during his teaching days whenever a fascinating dilemma, neither bad nor precisely good, presented itself to him. Mr. D was mildly swishing and sniffing his diet Coke as one might savor a glass of wine, and while to an outsider his expression would have appeared to be one of outstanding boredom, I'd been on the receiving end of those looks often enough to notice the flicker of mild interest in his ancient eyes. Mr. D had been yawning at the most recent Gods' Council to discuss the upcoming war, so if something had his attention, much less something happening at camp, it had to be big.

"Ah, hello Percy. Sleep well?" Chiron said as I bounded up the porch steps. I could still see the cogs turning rapidly behind his smiling eyes. I nodded in response to his question, and for a second it seemed as if Chiron was amused by something, but that thought vanished as soon as Mr. D spoke.

"Well, I see you've returned to cause more trouble. And not only that, but you've brought the Cyclops and a Tartarus-knows-what that's sitting in that sick room to do it for you." He finally took a sip of the diet coke only to realize that the can was empty.

I felt my fingers twitch as I resisted the urge to clench my fists in anger. I hated it when Mr. D blamed me for things that were out of my control, and now he was making Tyson, who had ventured on into the house in search of Annabeth, appear unwelcome in a camp he had helped save. In my opinion, Tyson deserved to be there more than Mr. D himself.

I was all ready to say something smart-alecky, but then I remembered the service Mr. D had done me when I'd been trying to rescue Annabeth. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not disloyal or ungrateful.

"Rachael is just a normal, mortal girl who got caught up in a one-in-a-million circumstance," I said casually, hands in my pockets. Mr. D snorted.

"Good luck proving that mortal bit," he said as a fresh can fell out of nowhere. I was taken aback, turning to Chiron for an explanation. He sighed as if the upcoming task would be arduous.

"Rachael isn't mortal. Although" he held up a hand as I tried to speak, "-neither is she a god or demigod. She has all the characteristics of a mortal: no particular gifts, no special blood or physical attributes, and no conspicuous mannerisms." Chiron paused, choosing his words carefully. "I –and Mr. D as well, for that matter- are immortal, and so impervious to time's confines that we can very literally feel you, and other mortals, aging before us. Rachael has a mortal body, and yet it is not aging."

"So, is she like one of Artemis's hunters?" I asked, my mind whirling.

Chiron shook his head. "Even the hunters age within, taking on a quality of timelessness from the moment they become immortal." I remembered how calm Bianca DiAngelo became after her initiation into the hunters.

Chiron shook his head, perplexed. "But Rachael feels time normally, and she responds to the world around her normally. She truly believes she has lived and grown fifteen years, and as far as I know, she isn't wrong. But now she has stopped aging completely, even mentally. My best guess is that the child is cursed."

"By who?" I asked.

"Whom," Chiron said, forever a teacher. "And I don't know."

"The silver net!" I exclaimed, the word curse striking a chord, but Chiron shook his head.

"I'd been planning on interrogating you and Annabeth once you'd wakened, but when this issue presented itself I got all the information I could from Annabeth and the girl. The diadem has been removed, and, while I have no idea what means Aphrodite meant to achieve by having the girl come here, it is nothing more than what the Love Goddess claimed it to be." I wilted, unhappy at how everything always seemed to become so complicated.

"Do they know?" I asked, meaning Rachael and Annabeth.

Chiron nodded. "It was inevitable, considering Rachael was the one I was examining and Annabeth was the one assisting me. Don't worry child," he soothed. "This evening the girl will seek the oracle, if she should so choose, and all will go on from there. And, if you'll excuse us, Mr. D and I are already late to do the breakfast announcements." Maybe I was overreacting, but I was shocked that he could just leave the problem pillowed by the sentiment 'Come what may.'

I was about to ask all the questions still buzzing in my head, but just then the screen door banged open with amazing force. Tyson reached out and yanked me into the building by the back of my shirt. He didn't mean any harm by it –I could tell by the way he was grinning as he led me to the sick room- but Tyson just couldn't understand why I would want to talk to the activities directors when there were people like Annabeth who could receive my attention.

He deposited me into a chair next to the bed where the two girls were sitting cross-legged and playing with the pinochle cards. Sitting next to them was a platter of assorted muffins, and I understood that it was too soon for Rachael to be meeting the other kids.

"Percy!" both girls greeted me in different ways. Rachael seemed happy and grateful, while Annabeth went through her usual chain of expressions. First she was surprised and anxious, looking warily at me as if she expected me to blurt out something horribly embarrassing. When I just went on giving her a curious look, she relaxed, offering a muffin and pasting a smile on her face that was a bit too bright to be natural. I blushed, wondering if I'd said anything to humiliate myself in my tiredness the previous night. I turned to Rachael to hide my flushed cheeks.

"How are you holding up?" I asked, genuinely caring. The pale, lively, and day dreamy girl was growing on me. She grinned at me very brightly for someone who'd been told she was probably cursed.

"Just great!" She held up her now bare arm. "I mean, I know that whole curse thing is a bummer, but I feel safe from monsters for the first time in weeks. I'm sure whatever the Oracle tells me, I'll be able to handle it if you're there." Annabeth made a strange sputtering sound through her muffin, and I dodged an airborne blueberry.

I looked at Rachael's face, glowing with the same trust for me that I saw in Tyson's for his older brother. She had the palest, though not sickly, most symmetrical features of anyone I'd ever seen. Her nose wasn't red with cold like the first time we'd met, and she was in a weird place between average-looking and pretty. If she scowled, like she did at the Hoover Dam, then she was plain, but if she smiled, she tipped the scale greatly into lovely. Annabeth was beautiful even when enraged, though I'd learned the hard way that beautiful and terrifying and incredibly deadly could all coincide with each other.

I began to feel that Rachael was like the sister I'd never had. When she smiled at me that way, how could I do anything but smile back?

I just prayed that I could get this girl through her prophesy when I doubted I could get myself through my own in one piece.

Plot Hint (I'm going to give these every once in a while): I'm fashioning Rachael's character as a PJO reincarnate of another figure from ancient Greek myth. Who, do you ask? Here's your hint: The Acis River/Pygmalion.