They woke up stiff and sore the next morning: a bad combination of archery and sleeping bags. Jack literally dragged each of the first-years up from the floor and pulled them out the door. They ate breakfast in the mess hall after making their sacrifices to the gods. Then, the Hermes cabin split up. Some went to the stables, some went to the arts and crafts tent, and the rest, including Myka and Pete, followed Jack out to the weaponry.
"The Apollos and Chiron had you first-years yesterday. Today," Jack smiled, "I get you."
There was a large field next to the armory, much like the archery field except the targets were stuffed dummies lining the long ends of the field. Inside, the armory was built like a large pole barn, open at either end. Against the walls, there were racks of helmets, chest plates, shields, swords, great two-headed axes, knives of all shapes and sizes. All the weapons looked sharp and real, but there didn't seem to be any arm or leg plates with the armor. When Myka asked, Jack explained they were in a storage room off to the side, but nobody used them except for real battles or assigned quests. He did not explain why they weren't used in practice fights when real weapons were still being used. Maybe an experienced swordsman could avoid cutting their partner, but what about the beginners? Myka's archery skills weren't perfect. She doubted her sword-fighting skills would be any better.
Jack fitted them all with the incomplete armor, handed out swords, and sent them to the center practice arena to pair up. He told them to wait while he got the experienced campers started on the dummies outside. Myka shifted her grip on her sword and worried over how exposed her arms and legs felt in just her t-shirt and shorts. Pete took a practice swing with his sword and fumbled it, almost dropping the sword to the ground. It didn't comfort her.
"Okay then," Jack said as he returned. "Who here has used a sword before?" Of the five first-years, nobody raised their hands. "Don't worry. I didn't expect you to. We'll start with the basics."
He showed them how to comfortably grip their sword, how to position their feet and balance themselves. He demonstrated swinging to attack and swinging to block. "Attack with the edge, and block with the flat." Then, he had them put on their helmets and practice both attacking and blocking with their partners.
Myka blocked first. It felt easy as Pete wrestled with the technique. His natural inclination seemed to be swinging with two hands despite Jack ensuring everyone had a sword of the right weight. When they switched, Pete struggled with using the flat side of the blade, while Myka found the attacking position just as easy as defending.
After they'd switched between attacking and defending a few times, Jack called out, "Alright, now free-for-all scrimmage. You're demigods, so prove it."
Myka and Pete exchanged a look. I'm going to get my arm cut off. Myka took a deep breath and stepped back into a fighting stance. Pete began to swing, but he had two hands clasped on the hilt.
"One hand," Myka scolded. Pete halted mid-swing and groaned. He dropped his left hand and re-clasped the sword in just his right hand.
"This is not like baseball," he said.
"No. It's a sword." Myka tapped the edge of hers to Pete's helmet. He stuck out his tongue and moved to block when she tried again. Then, they were actually sparring, blows becoming more confident and daring with each successful block. Pete had a tendency to push the offensive, but he couldn't keep his feet balanced. As a result, his blows were messy and often coming from what Myka considered to be terrible angles. She focused on her sword positioning, her steps, the timing.
She'd block and block and lay a tap to his armor whenever Pete stumbled or thought too long on how to move next. It was kind of fun. She inadvertently danced circles around him while Pete worked to land a hit on her. He never got through.
"How do you do that?"
"You keep swinging from the side."
"No," Pete said. "I know that." He tried swinging differently as he continued, "Your feet. How do you do that and still swing your sword right?"
Myka wasn't entirely sure what he meant, but she thought he was talking about the steps she'd taken to block him, move to the side, and then hit him on the side while his arms were still raised. She stepped out of range of another swing before answering.
"It's..." she didn't know how to put the motions into words. "I don't know. I just do it." She advanced on Pete for a bit so he would have practice blocking. "Just.. stay on your toes more."
"Yeah, like that will help me," Pete said as he tripped over an invisible line on the floor when he tried to step back. Myka giggled, and he stuck his tongue out at her again.
Their sparring led them to rotate and suddenly Myka had a clear view of the older campers sparring in the field. She became distracted watching their moves. They were so much more advanced than any of the first years. They used combinations - they had to be using combinations - but their movements were so fluid Myka couldn't pick out the individual techniques. She watched, entranced and responded to Pete almost automatically. Then she witnessed one boy disarm another. It happened quickly, but Myka was sure the second boy hadn't just lost his grip on his sword. The first boy had done something deliberate to force the sword out of his hand.
What had he done?
"You're not even looking," Pete said.
"I am, too." Out of the corner of her eye. Mostly, she was watching those boys outside hoping to see the disarming again.
Pete wouldn't let her split her attention like that.
"Myka. MY-ka. Myyyyyka," he repeated her name over and over again in varying pitches and voices until Myka couldn't take it anymore.
"I'm looking!" She turned her eyes back fully to their sparring. She still replayed the disarming in her head as she pushed Pete several feet back with her attacks. She'd have to be quick to pull off a disarming. And she'd need the right opening.
She watched Pete closer. Instead of watching for openings to his armor, she looked for openings to the hilt of his sword.
She thought she found one, but when she went to strike, she just struck shoulders with Pete and got their feet tangled up.
Pete laughed and they reset themselves to attack again. The second time Myka spotted an opening, she adjusted her swing and struck quickly before Pete could shift his position. She landed a solid blow to Pete's hand, and his sword went clattering to the floor.
"Ow!" Pete shook out his hand. "That stings." He retrieved his sword.
A fluttering went through Myka's veins. She'd disarmed him. She'd figured out how to disarm him. "Let's try it again."
"What?"
"Just," Myka bounced on her toes because she was too excited. "Do it again. Let's do it again."
Pete shrugged and went back to a fighting stance. She found the right opening faster this time, and when she struck, his sword again went clattering to the floor.
This time it caught Jack's attention.
"Hey are you guys having trouble?"
"No," Pete said while Myka shook her head.
"Let me see your grip again," Jack said.
"No, it isn't that," Pete said. "I can hold my sword. She just keeps knocking it out."
Myka nervously met Jack's gaze. "What does he mean you keep knocking his sword out of his hand?" Jack asked.
"Um." Myka swallowed. She glanced to the field outside. "They were... and I wanted to try it so.. I did. I'm sorry."
Jack flicked his eyes between the older campers outside and Myka. Finally, he nodded and stepped back. "Show me."
"What?"
"Go on," Jack said. "Disarm him again."
Myka hesitated. A look at Pete told her he didn't have any more clue if she was about to be punished or not.
"Come on, I want to see you do it again."
Myka and Pete squared up again. Myka struck first. They swung and blocked and blocked. Myka felt self-conscious with Jack watching them so single-mindedly, and she missed the first opportunity she had to disarm Pete. But another one came a few seconds later, and she sent Pete's sword to the floor again. They both looked up at Jack. Jack was grinning.
"We have a natural swordsman here. Way to go, Myka."
Myka smiled in relief.
They split up a few minutes later. Jack rolled out some indoor dummies for Myka, Sabrina, and Dresdon to practice on. He told them to work on maintaining their control while swinging at full strength. Then, he took Pete and Molly over to try out some knives.
Myka liked the practice dummy. She liked striking at full strength and feeling how easy and smooth the movements felt. She kept an eye on the older campers for other moves she could try. She practiced spins and jabs. She practiced combining two moves, but stumbled a little in her balance. She tried again and again, and as lunchtime approached, she could go from a jab to a spin and block without tripping. That's when the first knife flew by.
It struck the practice dummy in the shoulder. Myka lowered her arm and stared at the knife. Then, she looked behind her for the person who threw it. Pete and Molly were throwing knives with Jack, but they were in the corner and facing targets on the wall. They were too far away to have thrown this knife. The other first-years were busy with their own dummies. No one else was in the armory.
Myka removed the knife and set it aside. Nothing else happened so she resumed her practice. Another knife flew and stuck in the dummy's side. Myka turned and searched the area again. Something flickered at the top of her vision and drew her eyes up to the rafters. Wide, thick wooden beams criss-crossed all through the peaked roof. She couldn't see any ladders or stairs leading up, but - assuming someone could get around that - there were any number of places for someone to hide out of sight.
Someone was definitely up there, now. And they were throwing knives at her.
Anger swept through her. It was only her second day here, and someone was using her as target practice. Well, she'd show them. She'd survived an amphisbaena. She could handle some anonymous knife-thrower.
Myka identified the section of rafters she thought the person was hiding and angled herself to the practice dummy so she could view that section through the corner of her eye. She returned to her practice. A minute later, a knife flew into her dummy, and Myka saw it just before it hit. It was definitely coming from the rafters. She tensed her jaw and struck the knife with her sword to dislodge it.
Try it again. I dare you.
It was like the person heard her. Myka saw the knife spinning through the air and swung. Her sword smacked it and sent the knife careening off to the side where it hit the wall and fell to the floor.
"Stop it!" she yelled to the rafters.
The noise made everyone look at her. Jack walked over, spotted the knives sprinkling the floor, and growled. But he didn't yell at Myka. He spun around and also looked up into the rafters.
"Wells! Knock it off right now, I mean it! Get down and help or leave! I'm not letting you harass the newbies!"
There were some scuttling sounds and a laugh rang out. Then, there was a thump outside like someone had jumped to the ground. Jack shouted again and ran to the doorway. Myka followed close behind. The older campers had been distracted by the commotion, too. Everyone stared out over the field, but all Myka could see was a wave of dark hair disappearing down a hill.
"Who was that?" she asked.
"Helena Wells," Jack said. He still sounded furious. "Thinks she doesn't have to answer to me because she's been here longer, exactly one year longer, like that makes a difference. And she's younger, too. Drives me nuts."
"What cabin is she in?" Myka asked.
"Ours unfortunately. She's never been claimed." The lunch bell rang out across camp, and Jack turned back into the armory. "Come on, we need to get your armor put up."
Myka examined the Hermes table closely during lunch. Everyone sitting at the table had been present at the armory. There wasn't anyone new and no one was missing. Whoever this Helena Wells was, she must have never eaten with their cabin since Myka arrived. That meant Myka had never met the girl, so why on earth had Helena targeted her? Because she was new? There were four other new kids in Hermes cabin. Helena hadn't thrown knives at any of them.
Pete chatted happily to her through the meal. This demigod stuff was cool, playing with weapons all day. And he was good at shooting a bow and arrow! And she was good at whacking with a sword. Maybe they'd do well at tournaments. Did she think they had tournaments at this camp? – and on and on. Myka did admit fighting with the sword felt, well, amazing, but her excitement was dampened by being made a target earlier.
They spent the afternoon playing in an intense sand volleyball tournament with Apollo, ares, and Demeter cabins. Chiron dropped a boy off with their group. His name was Tyler, and he had just discovered he was a demigod, too. He sat with Myka and Pete at dinner, but went with Dresdon and Molly for free time. Pete was invited to play with the Apollo cabin in the lake. He asked Myka if she wanted to come, but Myka turned him down. She didn't want to get soaked again and decided to head back to Hermes cabin to read.
Myka sat down on her sleeping bag and dug through her backpack for her book. To her surprise, she came up empty. Only her extra clothes were in her bag. A trickle of panic ran through her. Had she left it in Mr. Valda's car? No. No, it was in there. She'd just buried it with her t-shirts. She checked again. Nothing. Then, she dumped everything out on her sleeping bag and searched through the items one by one. Still, no book. Now the panic fully blossomed. Her book was missing.
She took a deep breath and fought down the urge to cry. It wasn't fair. Why would anyone take something that didn't belong to them? And why would they take her book? No one else in this stupid camp seemed to even read books.
As she stuffed her clothes back into her bag, she found a slip of paper tucked in the pile. It was a handwritten note in ancient Greek that translated to "Come find me."
Myka was torn between anger and frustrating helplessness. The thief had left a note to taunt her. She glanced around the cabin, wondering how she was supposed to go find this person without any directions. Then, she noticed a sticky note hanging on the post of the closest bunk bed.
"Warmer."
Myka was not amused by this game. She searched the rest of the cabin and didn't find another note. But she did notice a spot in the wall that looked odd. Upon closer investigation, Myka discovered the section swung open like a glove compartment in a car. Inside was a package of gum, some strange gold coins, and - lo and behold - another note. This one said, "Not yet."
Myka took the note, but left the rest. She began searching the walls for other hideaways. She came up with three more and one in the ceiling that required climbing on someone's bunk to reach. Two of them were dusty like they weren't used often, one of them contained a Twinkie so ancient it actually looked dehydrated, but all of them also held notes featuring various taunts like "no, sorry. Colder." or commentary on the hideaway's contents "But why waste time racing cars in a video game?" None contained her book.
She found one last hideaway in the baseboard near the door with a note that said "Oh, so far off." A solid forty-five minutes had passed during the search, and Myka was fed up.
"I hate you," she said out loud to vent. She slid the baseboard closed and stood up. This was a hopeless chase.
By now, the sun was beginning to set. The back of the cabin faced the lake which was on the west side of camp. If there were windows in the back wall of the cabin, Myka would be able to see the sunset. But the cabin had no windows in the back wall.
Yet Myka could still see sunbeams on the floor.
She frowned and walked closer. The beams were slipping beneath the wall, like a light slips beneath a door. It jogged Myka's memory of that light she'd spotted in the middle of the night. Was that wall not really a wall?
She examined it carefully. It looked like the other cabin walls. She had even found a hideaway in it earlier. But looking at it again with the mindset that there could be a room behind, Myka could see that it didn't appear to be as stable as the other walls, and that it was missing the baseboard. She dropped to the floor and saw a half-inch gap between the bottom of the wall and the floor. She couldn't see past the wall very well, but the floor definitely ran beyond it. There was another room to this cabin.
She stood back up and searched for the door. She started in the middle and soon found a depression in the wall that looked like a simple knot in the wood from further away. She pressed her fingers against it. It wasn't a button. Was it a handhold?
She tried pulling and pushing to either side and discovered the wall slid away to the right like a closet door. She slid it back enough to step through and looked around.
The hidden room ran the entire back wall of the cabin, but was extremely narrow. The bunk bed to Myka's right barely fit. The left half of the room was taken up by a double-decker desk. The bottom level sat a little higher than the bottom bunk and was covered in scrolls, books, pencils and protractors of various sizes. The top level reached a few inches above the bed of the top bunk and had blueprints hanging over its edge. Lying on her stomach across the top bunk was a girl, a bit older than Myka, and with long, black hair. Myka realized this was Helena Wells, the mysterious Hermes resident who had thrown knives at her that morning.
"You found me!" Helena said. "Well done!" She sounded genuinely pleased. And did not sound American.
Myka stood up straight and crossed her arms. "Did you leave those notes?"
"Indeed, I did." Helena slipped off the bed into the thin space that passed for a walkway in this room. "How many did you find?" She plucked the papers from Myka's hand and counted them up. "Only missed two, that is impressive. Aren't those hideaways fascinating? Carved out by generations of demigods searching for some privacy in a cabin where none is to be found." She smiled at Myka, and Myka realized her accent was British like Mr. Valda's. "Well, privacy and security. Hermes children do have a tendency to swipe things from others."
"Like my book?" Myka said. "Where is it?"
"It's safe." Helena climbed into the bottom bunk to flip through the piles on the bottom desk. She came out with Myka's copy of Treasure Island. "It's a bit odd for a demigod to own such a book."
Myka grabbed her book and clutched it to her chest. "Why were you looking through my things?"
"I didn't," Helena said. "Two of the kids were searching the first-year's bags for food to steal. I overheard one of them mention they found a book. I was curious about the owner."
"So you stole it?"
"I left a note."
Myka huffed. She checked over the book's cover for damage, and when she found none, she said, "Read your own books next time." Then, she walked away.
"Wait!" Helena followed and stood in the doorway of her hidden room. "I was wondering. What other books do you like to read?"
Myka hovered in the middle of the cabin and shrugged.
"Treasure Island, that can't be your first novel," Helena continued. "What others have you read?"
Myka bit her lip. She wanted to say she'd read any books she had time to decipher. She wanted to mention Jules Verne and L. Frank Baum. Even at school where no one else was dyslexic, Myka still didn't have anybody to discuss her love of reading with. But this Helena wasn't like the kids at Myka's school. She was dangerous. "You threw knives at me."
Helena rolled her eyes. "I threw knives around you. I never would've hit you."
"No, you threw knives at me," Myka said. "Why'd you do that?"
"Because you looked like you could use a challenge." Helena smiled, "And you handled it brilliantly. Deflected my last throw with ease."
That was such a ridiculous answer. People didn't throw knives at other people because it would be a challenge. But a commotion rose up outside distracted them both. People were shouting and there was the loud sound of water splashing like someone was struggling in the lake. Myka got a bad feeling.
"Pete." She tossed her book by her backpack and ran out the door.
"Pete!" Myka sprinted down to the Apollo cabin where a crowd stood around the lake. She darted around people until she reached the water's edge. A girl was pulling a coughing Pete back onto the grass. Myka ran to them.
"What happened? What did you do?"
"I," but Pete coughed too hard to answer with words so he pointed out to the lake. Myka looked out and saw a line of buoys stretching from land out into the lake, but that didn't tell her why Pete looked half-drowned.
"We've been playing Human Slingshot," answered the girl who had brought Pete up. Dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes - Myka vaguely recognized her as belonging to one of the smallest tables in the mess hall. The girl poked Pete. "Well, they've been playing. I've been lifeguarding."
"What's Human Slingshot?"
"You go," Pete coughed again and pointed at the swings. "On the swings then you try and hit -" another cough "- the."
Pete waved vaguely at the lake as he coughed again.
"It's a stupid Apollo game where they're launching themselves at targets instead of shooting arrows," the girl said. Now Myka understood the buoys.
A scrawny boy who'd been swimming in the lake popped out and dashed over laughing. Rebecca followed not far behind.
"Holy crap that was awesome!" the boy said.
"Did I hit it?" Pete asked.
"Yeah, man, you pummeled it!"
"Whoo!" Pete cheered and then winced and patted his chest. "Ow. Mykes, I got fifty points!"
Myka had no idea what that meant. "Can you even swim?"
"Psh, yeah."
The rescue girl shrugged. "He was doing fine until that last jump. He landed further into the lake than he could handle swimming back. Are you going to be okay now?" she asked Pete. Pete nodded. "Good." And she stood up to head back into the lake.
"Thanks, Shanna!" Rebecca said.
Water dripped down onto Pete's face, and he pushed his hair back to look up at Rebecca. "Is it my turn again?"
"How about you sit out a round," Rebecca said.
"But I've got two more targets to hit."
"Yeah and they're further out than the one you just did."
"I'll be fine."
"Pete," Myka scolded. "Stop trying to drown yourself."
"What, I'm not! It's fun."
Rebecca shook her head like she was amused. "Come on, let's stand you up first." She took Pete's hands and pulled him up while Myka squinted and shaded her eyes. Was it getting brighter outside?
Myka stood up, too. The conversations and laughter that had been going on around them morphed into a unified murmuring. Someone called out Rebecca's name. Some of the kids pointed up towards something in the sky.
"Hey, back up guys," Rebecca said.
"What?"
"Back up," the scrawny boy said and tugged on her shirt sleeve. Myka retreated from Pete, but still didn't understand what was happening. The sun kept getting brighter and shining straight down like it was noon, except the sun was also still setting off in the distance. What was going on?
Pete glanced around and shifted nervously with everyone staring at him.
"Pete, look up," Rebecca said. Pete craned his neck back trying to see what was happening. He probably couldn't make it out, standing directly below it, but Myka could see it clearly. It was a lyre, glowing gold and spinning above Pete's head. A lyre like the one Apollo was famous for playing.
Pete had been claimed.
