Pete moved into Apollo cabin that night. Myka smiled and gave him a high-five in congratulations, but as he trudged away with his backpack and sleeping bag, she had to fight down a lump in her throat. The evening felt far more lonely.
This feeling didn't improve the next day. Myka went through the breakfast line by herself, made her offering to the gods by herself, and ate at the Hermes table by herself. The rest of the campers seemed oblivious to the change. The older ones were all discussing a Capture the Flag game scheduled for that afternoon.
"Who's on our team?" Dresdon asked.
"Ares, Demeter, and Poseidon this week, so we'll be down in overall numbers," Jack said. "But we've got a few surprises up our sleeve." He and a veteran camper named Leann shared a smirk and a high five.
"What do the winners get?" Sabrina asked.
"Bragging rights for the next week."
Whoopie.
"So how much does Apollo know about our traps?" Leann asked.
Jack shook his head. "Nothing. I never took Pete to the arts and crafts tent."
"I wasn't worried about him. I'm worried about your girlfriend."
Jack frowned. "Rebecca isn't my girlfriend." Leann snorted. "She isn't! And I don't tell her about my secret inventions until after they're not a secret anymore."
"Sure, because you're super humble."
Myka tuned out and glanced toward the Apollo table. Pete was chatting with one of his new siblings, but he noticed her gaze. He grinned and waved large and goofy at her which made Myka smile and wave back.
Jack pulled the first-years aside after breakfast. "Everyone will be busy prepping for Capture the Flag, so you guys should just spend the morning practicing your weapon of choice and maybe practice taking some hits."
"What about Tyler?" Sabrina asked. "He hasn't tried any weapons yet."
"Oh." Jack studied Tyler. "Do you know if you're good at any weapons?"
"I've helped skin a deer before."
"Good enough," Jack said. "Go practice with the knives. See you after lunch for the game."
The five of them trekked over to the armory. Another cabin was in there preparing. They had something covered with tarps in the corner and guarded it closely. They allowed the first-years to grab their armor and weapons, but then booted them outside to practice. Sabrina and Tyler claimed a dummy to work with knives; the other two paired up to spar. Myka was left alone to train, but that didn't last long.
"He was better at archery."
"God!" Myka lost focused and she hit the dummy with the face of the blade instead of the edge. Helena had appeared suddenly behind the dummy.
"It's gods, actually," Helena said. "They do get rather jealous if you start singling one out."
"Where did you come from?" Myka hadn't seen or heard her approach. "Do you spy on everyone?"
"Not everyone," Helena said with a slight smile. She looked past Myka, and her expression changed into a frown. "Oh, now that was just pathetic. He expects to fight anybody like that?"
"Who?" Myka looked over her shoulder.
"That Dresdon boy. I was saying he should really go back to archery. He was better at it."
Myka turned forward. "Maybe he likes fighting with a sword better."
"More likely he didn't think he was good enough at archery."
Myka didn't see how that was a different reason. Helena continued, "He's been here a full week now, he's at least as gifted with archery as your friend is, and yet it was only your friend who was claimed by Apollo last night. Dresdon's still here in Hermes. He must think he wasn't good enough, and so he's given the whole thing up. Silly, really. One should always fight to one's strengths. What does it matter what the gods say?"
Myka looked over at Dresdon again. He and Molly were both fighting with the basic moves they'd been taught yesterday. No spins, no jabs. No experimentation to get better.
"But we're new," Myka said. "A week ago, we didn't even know demigods existed. We're all still learning."
"Oh, come now," Helena said. "Don't lump yourself in with the rest. You're better than them, smarter. You pay attention."
"Is that why you're picking on me?"
"I'm not picking on you." Helena walked around to stand between Myka and the dummy. "I am sorry, by the way."
"For which part?" Throwing knives, stealing her book? Sneaking up on her when she's holding a sword?
"For your friend being claimed. I'm sorry he was taken from you."
Myka shook her head. "What are you talking about? Pete's still my friend."
"But he's been claimed. He's moved on."
"Why are you being so mean about Pete?"
"I'm not."
Myka gave a frustrated growl and walked off to another practice dummy.
"I wasn't being mean," Helena said. "I was offering my sympathies."
Myka pretended the dummy was holding a sword and practiced disarming it.
"I know what it's like to be left alone."
Myka ground her palm against the sword hilt and went through the disarming motion again.
"Myka."
"Go away!" She swung at the dummy again and focused on ignoring Helena's presence. Suddenly, her sword hit metal on a swing.
"What?" Myka blinked at the other sword she'd hit and then looked at Helena. "Where'd you get that from?" Helena had definitely not been carrying a sword when she showed up.
"Oh, from around," Helena said with a careless air. "Want to spar?"
Myka hit Helena's sword away. "I want to practice." She swung at the dummy, but Helena brought her sword up and blocked her again.
"Sparring is practicing, silly. I'd like to practice, too."
Myka huffed. "You don't have any armor on."
"I don't need it," Helena said. "It gets in my way."
"You're crazy!"
Helena grinned. "Not the first time that's been suggested. Come on then." She hopped to the side. "Let's see how good you are." She swung and Myka instinctively blocked it to avoid a cut to her face. Helena sidestepped and slashed again, and again Myka blocked. Helena continued darting back and forth forcing Myka to dodge or block until Myka became fed up and took an offensive swing of her own.
"Finally!" Helena said. She looked delighted as they settled in to an outright sparring match. Myka soon learned not to worry about cutting her opponent. Helena easily blocked every move she made. It was wonderful, though, the challenge. Helena pushed her to think and move quickly and taught her new moves. Not only by using the new moves against her, but by walking her through each step of them when they required a rest. Helena chatted about everything - Myka's sword-fighting, Capture the Flag, new throwing knives the Hephaestus children were developing that could release a spray of needles as they flew. Whether they were sparring or reclining in the grass, Helena's rate of speech and need for oxygen hardly seemed to change.
And Myka admired her. Helena was clearly arrogant and didn't give much thought to other people's feelings, but oh was she brilliant. She was Pete's age, Myka learned. She'd turned thirteen over the winter, and had lived at the camp since she was seven.
"How'd you find out that you're a demigod when you were only seven? Did your parents tell you?"
"It wasn't hard to piece together when hellhounds were practically beating my door down."
Myka had never seen anything like that around her home. Not until Pete arrived. "My dad just told me. Then sent me here."
Helena stood and helped Myka up from the grass. "Here is better, anyway."
Myka was disappointed when Helena didn't come to lunch with her. "I don't eat in the mess hall during the summer." So, when the lunch bell rang, Myka entered the hall alone. Pete and his tray sat down beside her.
"Aren't you supposed to be at Apollo table now?"
"Yeah, but I wanted to talk to you. I got to shoot with the bow again and guess how far I hit a bullseye at?"
"How far?"
"Two hundred feet!" Pete said. "And that's still just the medium targets. The big kids can all shoot a bullseye at over five hundred feet. It's crazy!"
"So do you get a bow for the capture the flag game later?"
"Nuh uh uh uh!" Rebecca was standing behind their seats. "No swapping strategies with the enemy until after the game."
"I wasn't talking about strategy," Pete said. "I was talking about my mad archery skills. Pew!" He mimed shooting a bow across the room.
"The weapon you'll use still gives away strategy," Rebecca said.
"What, how?"
"Not in front of the enemy." Rebecca tugged on the back of Pete's shirt. "Up."
Pete grumbled but stood up. "It's just Myka."
"And she's probably already breaking down part of our plan in her head." Rebecca said to Myka, "No offense. Things just get kind of intense on Fridays." Then, she poked Pete. "Over this way, firstie."
"Well can I show her our cabin later?"
"Yeah, after the game."
"Awesome!" Pete turned and grinned at Myka. "The skylights look so cool inside! And I have a bed!"
Rebecca waved her arms. "Scoot along."
"Bye Pete," Myka said.
"See ya."
As they walked away, Myka overheard Pete ask Rebecca, "Can I dress in all green for the games? And wear a mask?" Myka shook her head and returned to her food.
"As a reminder, the rules are as follows," Chiron said. All the campers were decked out with their chosen armor and weapons and grouped around a creek that ran from the lake into the forest. Red team stood on one side of the creek, blue team on the other. Myka was with the blue team.
Chiron continued, "Each flag must be fully visible and cannot be guarded by more than two people. The guards must stand at least ten yards away from the flag. The creek is the boundary between the two sides. You may roam anywhere in the forest. All magic items are allowed. You may disarm prisoners, but do not bound or gag them." Chiron looked pointedly at a group on the red side that Myka thought belonged to the Athena cabin. "And finally, no killing or maiming the other campers unless you want to lose dessert for a week." Myka's eyes widened in alarm. "Let the game begin!" Chiron blew the whistle hanging from his neck, and then both teams were shouting and running in opposite directions. Myka ran too, wondering what the likelihood of someone dying during capture the flag was and if there was any better way to hang a sword from her waist so she could run without being slapped in the leg.
Jack and a black girl with muscular arms seemed to be in charge. It looked like they were zig-zagging at random through the trees, but the way the older kids would direct or outright pull on the younger kids made Myka suspect the path was specific and intentional. Like there were traps laid out in the forest already and they were weaving between them.
"Demeter, go set up the flag," the black girl directed. A group of six split off from the group, one carrying their blue flag.
"First-year campers," Jack said, "follow Demeter and set up a periphery defense."
"But we can only have two people guarding the flag," said Dresdon.
"You're not guarding it. You're defense," Jack said. "Go." Myka and the other first-year campers ran off after Demeter cabin.
Demeter chose a dead tree to hang the flag on. Then, all but two disappeared into the trees. The first-years shuffled around, looking for a spot to stand on defense while Dresdon and Sabrina argued how far twenty yards was. Myka left them and walked on. The kids were positioning themselves into a semi-circle, but Myka was worried about people sneaking up from behind and stealing the flag. This was a big forest, and she had never been in here before. There could easily be a path that would bring the other team around whatever defense they set up.
She slowly circled around. The forest looked like a regular-old woods filled with trees, fallen branches, moss, tree roots, some mushrooms. She saw a grey squirrel run down a tree only to run immediately back up when it spotted her. The sword still bumped against her leg, but it didn't hurt like when she ran. She wondered if wearing the protective leg armor helped with that, but she'd been told to only worry about the chest plate and helmet still for today. Apparently, the campers were careful not to beat-up first years during the early games. Maybe that was why Jack had assigned them to defense, because he knew it would make the other team hesitate to push on. Or maybe he had written them off as useless and given them defense because he was relying on whatever traps they'd set. Or maybe their team was relying on a strong offensive strategy - they did have Ares on their side. God of war, his children probably preferred offense.
Myka sighed. She didn't know enough to guess their team's plan. She was just taking blind guesses. Maybe she shouldn't have even left the other first-years behind.
A second whistle blew which signaled the end of the preparation period. The teams were free to go after each other's flag now.
Myka examined the nearby trees. A pine tree had branches low enough for her to reach, and she walked over to climb up.
"What are you doing?"
Myka dropped her hands away from the branch and turned to her left. A Demeter girl stood with her brow scrunched and eyes flitting between Myka and the tree.
"Um, I was going to climb up and try to see where the other team was coming from."
"Oh." The Demeter girl stopped looking puzzled and started scanning the trees. "Good thinking, but don't climb that one. Use..." She checked out several before settling on an oak five feet over. "This one. It'll give you a better view."
"How do you know that? Is it an official lookout tree?" Myka asked as she walked over.
"No," the Demeter girl said and didn't add more.
Myka paused before climbing and gave the girl a questioning look.
"My mom's Demeter," the girl shrugged. "We can understand plants and animals."
"Understand like talk to them or read their thoughts?"
"Not - no. Just kind of... read them, I guess. And influence them," the girl said. "Sorry, I don't know how to explain it better."
Myka accepted this and latched on to the lowest branch. The Demeter girl helped her balance until she'd pulled herself completely up into the branches, and then held her sword when Myka realized it was getting in the way.
"Stay at least five feet from the top," the girl said. "Don't climb higher or you might break the tree."
The bark scratched and the slight breeze tried to push leaves into her mouth, but the branches made a decent ladder. It helped, too, that her hair was pinned down by the helmet and couldn't escape to tangle with the pointy oak leaves.
When Myka was about five or six feet from the top, she stopped and looked around. She had kept a tunnel-vision as she was climbing and so hadn't seen how high she had really gone. A swooping, reorientation feeling rushed through her stomach, and she gripped the tree tighter.
"What do you see?"
Trees. Myka searched in the direction of the creek. She saw movement in a select area. At first she thought a burst of wind was making it's way through the trees, but the ripple in leaves didn't move fast enough. Myka watched it longer. Something large was pushing its way through the forest.
Carefully, Myka climbed down and explained what she saw to the Demeter girl.
"Which direction?"
Myka pointed. The Demeter girl put her hands on the tree and closed her eyes. A splash of red and gold crossed Myka's vision, and she looked up into the tree. The leaves were changing from healthy green to autumn red and back again. It was almost like a blinking neon street sign.
"Are you doing that?"
"Yeah, I'm warning the team that there's a monster headed this way. The rest of my cabin will keep an eye out for it and call in reinforcements if need be."
"Is that something only the Demeter cabin knows?"
"Changing the leaves? Yeah, that's only us. The satyrs can control plants somewhat, too, though."
"No," Myka shook her head. "Understanding the signal, knowing what it means. Is that only for your cabin to understand?"
"Oh, yep." The girl smiled. "We change the signals every week like baseball catchers do. That way the other cabins can't figure it out and use it to their advantage. I mean, we use it to help whatever team we're on, but it's still only our signaling system. That's why we're almost always used as lookouts and guards during capture the flag."
Myka found this fascinating. She wondered how many signals they needed and if they were all communicated through changing the leaf colors or if they used other plants sometimes. The possibilities could be endless. Depending on their capabilities, they might never run out of new signals to use.
"You're already trying to figure out ways to use it, aren't you?"
"What?" Myka bit her lip and glanced away. "No."
The Demeter girl chuckled. "Gods, I bet you'll end up in Grant's cabin."
"Who?"
"Grant York, leader of Athena's cabin. You sound just like he did our first year here."
Myka's heart raced. This girl thought she would be claimed by Athena, goddess of wisdom and battle. Is that who her dad had meant by her real mom?
Wait a second. "Did you say something abo-" but she didn't get to finish asking about the monster heading their way. Shouts and the clang of metal echoed through the trees, coming from where Myka had left the other first-years.
The Demeter girl grinned. "And red team tries to sneak in the other way. I don't think so." She passed Myka her sword back. "Let's go take them down."
Myka's team ultimately lost the Capture the Flag game. The monster turned out to be a large, mechanical robot designed by Hephaestus and Athena cabins to distract. Then they sent half of their numbers to invade from the other direction while their main force snuck up the middle to take the flag. The Hermes traps hindered, but didn't stop them. Ares cabin was furious. They had been able to grab red team's flag, but didn't make it back over the creek first. For some reason, Chiron pulled Hephaestus cabin aside for what looked like a lecture after everything was done.
Despite the loss, Myka was fairly pleased. She'd gotten to spar in a pseudo-combat situation. The boy she'd fought had had the upper hand because he'd handled the uneven terrain better (she'd have to work on that), but she didn't think she'd fought like a person who'd only picked up a sword the day before. She considered that a personal triumph.
She was still giddy when she met up with Pete after dinner. Pete was just as wired.
"Holy smokes, wasn't that so awesome? It was like a full-on battle!"
"I know! I even knocked a guy down! And then he knocked me down. Or I tripped on a stick. They kind of happened at the same time."
"We beat you, though! Hee hee," Pete grinned. Myka stuck her tongue out at him and shoved his shoulder.
"Did you get to shoot anything?"
"Yeah I hit three people with nets! Booyah!" Pete broke into what Myka assumed was meant to be a victory dance, but it really just looked like a worm wiggling upright.
"How do you shoot nets?" And Pete explained about the arrows that looked like regular arrows but on their downward arc would pop into weighted nets to ensnare people. Myka was pretty sure by this point that demigods had the coolest weapons in existence. Pete was pretty sure that he had the coolest weapons in existence.
He took her on a tour of his cabin. Pete pointed out all the skylights, and it did look pretty awesome. Like having the sky as the ceiling. The cabin also seemed to glow with sunlight on the inside, but Pete explained that wasn't related to the skylights because it was that way at night, too.
"When it's time for lights out, we can just clap our hands, you know like those commercials: Lights on." Pete clapped twice. "Lights off." He clapped again. "Only we don't say lights off, we say sun off." Then, he showed her his bunk.
"I don't get the top bunk," he pouted, "cause I'm new." It still looked way more comfortable than Myka's sleeping bag. Speaking of, Pete showed her what his cabin did with the sleeping bags new campers brought with them. They were sewn together and tied up in rolls along the walls.
"Sometimes, like once a week or something, we do these dance parties and the sleeping bags all come out and make like a tent. And then inside it we have a cabin party. They said it's like music and dancing and story time and stuff. I dunno. I think my first one is tomorrow. I can't wait!"
When he'd shown Myka everything he could think of, he dragged her outside to play basketball with some of the other Apollo kids. Being good at archery and hitting targets meant the Apollo children were also excellent at making baskets, but they were only average on every other aspect of basketball and Myka found she could keep well enough. It was fun and one of the older kids gave her a high five after a particularly good assist. All in all, it was an excellent Friday.
The weekend schedule was much the same as the weekdays: breakfast in the mess hall, followed by whatever activity their cabin was scheduled for. Saturday morning had Jack taking the first-years still in his care to the arts and crafts tent. This did not house the usual arts and crafts one expected to find in a summer camp. There were no popsicle picture frames, no beaded necklaces. Instead there was tying nets, wood-carving, weaving, metal-working (though some of that took place in the forge as well). There was chariot building and painting. They even had an area for tearing apart and rebuilding electronics, though Jack warned communication devices like cell phones were bad to use outside of camp. The monsters could track you easier if you called someone with a phone. Even radios could be sketchy. But that didn't mean they wouldn't need to know how one worked or what parts could be salvaged from each device. They didn't know what kind of an emergency they might find themselves in one day.
Most were bored and restless by lunchtime. Only Tyler and Myka were content to keep crafting, so Jack allowed them to stay in the tent for the afternoon too while he took the others on to the forge. Myka was studying a blueprint with a half-assembled transistor radio lying in front of her when she heard Tyler exclaim.
"No. No stop that. Stop!"
She frowned and looked over to the wood-carving table and saw Tyler clamping his hands over his carving while small branches and leaves grew out around and between his fingers.
"What'd you do?" She walked over.
"Nothing!" Tyler looked scared, and the leaves kept growing. Myka pried away his hands and saw he'd carved a face into the wood. Tyler broke down. "I just thought it'd be cool if my face had hair and then it started growing." The thin branches grew up towards the ceiling now that they were free. Myka watched them grow past her face.
"Please don't tell anyone. I'll get in trouble."
Myka looked at Tyler. He still looked panicked and seemed to want her to do something, but Myka had no idea what to do. She looked back at the branches now way too big to be considered hair for any head and picked up a wood-carving knife. She cut through the branches near the block of original wood until they were all trimmed off. Then, she took the branches over to the window and dropped them outside.
"It didn't happen," she told Tyler with a shake of her head. Tyler nodded and looked relieved.
Two days later, when they were out helping in the strawberry fields, Tyler was claimed. A scythe and ear of corn glowed bright in the air, marking him for Demeter's cabin.
Myka couldn't sleep. Correction: couldn't sleep anymore. She'd been asleep, but had, for some reason, woken up in the middle of the night, and now she couldn't fall back asleep. Hermes cabin rose up dark and slumbering all around her except for the thin light leaking through the back wall. Myka had been staring at the light through blurry eyes for near ten minutes. Finally, she put on her glasses and crept back there. Gently, she slid open the door.
"Hi."
"You're still up," Helena said.
"You too." Myka stepped inside and slid the door closed so she wouldn't wake anybody up. "Do you ever go to sleep?"
"On occasion." Helena was on the bottom bunk with a scroll spread over her lap.
"What are you reading?"
"I'm trying to trace the origins of dyslexia in demigods," Helena said.
"I thought it was because our brains are looking for ancient Greek."
"Yes, that's the why, but I'm looking for the how," Helena said. "More specifically, how can it be undone."
Myka needed a few extra seconds to understand this through her sleepy haze. "You want to fix our dyslexia?"
Helena's eyes looked bright and alert. "Wouldn't that make reading so much easier? All those books we could read without hesitating, and cursive writing. It won't be scribbles anymore. It will be words."
That sounded amazing. Cursive writing in third grade had been a nightmare for Myka.
"It will make it easier on you at home, as well. I imagine living above a bookstore must have been difficult for you."
Myka frowned. "How do you know I live above a bookstore?"
"I talked to your friend Pete," Helena said.
"When did you talk to Pete?" But Helena didn't respond. She scooted down the bed and stood up beside her.
"May I see your glasses?" And then she took them off Myka's face before Myka could reply.
"Hey!"
Helena put the glasses on herself. "Are you blind?"
"Give them back!" Myka reached for them, but Helena turned towards the bed and, in this small of space, effectively blocked Myka.
"I need to see them first." Helena removed the glasses and turned them over in her hands, examining them at every angle. Myka bounced on her toes, anxious to have her glasses back safely and soon. Finally, Helena returned them. Myka slid them back on with relief.
"That might be the solution."
"What is?" Myka asked, but Helena was darting back onto the bottom bunk and rolling up the scroll she'd had out.
"I need to do more research." She placed the scroll on the bottom desk and rooted around for another one and then slid back to sit against the wall.
"Shouldn't we go to sleep?" Myka asked.
"You can sleep up top if you'd like."
Myka looked at the top bunk with its mattress and sheets. It definitely would be comfier than her sleeping bag, but that didn't really seem fair to the other kids currently sleeping in their sleeping bags. Myka wondered if she should return to the main room to go to sleep, but she realized she didn't want to go back out there yet. She compromised by sitting on the opposite end of the bottom bunk and pulling her legs to her chest. Helena didn't say anything against her choice. She didn't say anything at all, actually. She looked absorbed in her new scroll. Myka wondered what was in it, and if the scrolls were books written in ancient Greek, and where Helena had gotten hers.
Her eyes roamed the room. The space was well lit, including here in the bottom bunk. Somehow the top bunk didn't cast a shadow on it at all. This was even more confusing because Myka couldn't remember seeing a ceiling light in here, and there was certainly no lamps.
"I sectioned off this room for myself when I was eight," Helena said. Myka looked at her, and Helena continued. "I was in the sleeping bags my first summer, as is tradition. Then, summer ended and all but a very few were gone from camp. I had Hermes cabin all to myself and could sleep in the beds. The following summer, Cara, the cabin leader at the time, kicked me back to the sleeping bags because I was the youngest. I was furious and protested to Chiron, to Mr. D and to anyone else that would listen, but Chiron leaves cabin disputes to the cabin leaders and Mr. D doesn't care about individual campers, so Cara's order stood. I was an unclaimed eight year old, the sleeping bag was where I belonged. When that summer ended, I was once again alone in the cabin. So I slid a bed to the corner and installed the false wall to block off my own room. Nobody even realized I'd done it until the campers returned the following summer and they were short one bed. They shouted, they beat at my door, but I refused to give it up. Might have even sliced through a few hands that tried to push through my doorway. Eventually, they surrendered and left me to it. The room is mine."
Myka twisted a curl around her finger. "You're all by yourself during the year?"
"Just in the cabin. There's a Demeter boy and twin girls from Aphrodite that stay year-round. And the Hephaestus children are often here because there's so much to do."
"That's still pretty alone."
"Not so different than the summer, really," Helena said and returned her attention to her scroll.
Myka still twisted her hair. After a moment, she said, "Tyler got claimed today. You know Tyler? The blonde-haired boy that came the day after me and Pete?"
"Yes. He went to Demeter, didn't he?"
"Yeah. And Pete's in Apollo."
"And Sabrina will be claimed by Ares soon, I expect. Whenever she does something particularly noteworthy," Helena said. "The gods do like a spectacle. Not sure where Dresdon or Molly will go. Maybe they won't. Maybe they'll stay right here for many years."
Myka chewed her lip. "What about me?"
Helena kept her eyes on her scroll. "Hard to say."
"Someone thought I'd end up in Athena's cabin."
Helena didn't look like she was reading the scroll anymore. "I repeat, it's hard to say. Lots of cabins want you."
"Want me? What are you talking about?"
"The cabins always rank the new campers until they're claimed. You're quite popular right now. Demeter likes you, Hephaestus likes you, Athena likes you - Ares doesn't like you, but they don't bother with the new kids. They expect Ares children will come to them. However, Jack has rather high hopes you'll be made a permanent resident here."
"What? He doesn't want me to be claimed?"
"No, he wants Hermes to claim you. I think he's rather jealous Rebecca got Pete. You and he were the most promising of the bunch." Helena flicked her eyes up to Myka. "I wouldn't repeat that around the others. Ares children can get rather nasty when you damage their pride."
"But..." Myka didn't know how to process any of this. "But why do they want me? It's not like they have any say in it."
"No," Helena said. "But one can always hope."
Myka went to bed not long after that. The talk of claiming made her nervous and the grey before the sunrise reminded her of the sleep she'd missed.
Over the next week, she was introduced to more aspects of demigod life. Chiron began taking them into the woods during the mornings to explain about the different monsters and how to defeat them. He even summoned examples for them to see. Myka's knee ached when he summoned an amphisbaena. Her scab was still healing.
Her afternoons were spent with different cabins. Hephaestus took the first-years one day to give them hands-on experience in the forge hammering out swords and shields. Another day, the girl who rescued Pete from the lake showed them the pegasus stables. Pete was devastated Myka had had a lesson in the stables before he did, but he took back that disappointment back once he learned the lesson was cleaning out the stalls. Later in the week, Myka finally met some members of the Athena cabin as they taught the first-years the Greek myths and history they may not have heard elsewhere. Most of it was redundant to Myka, but the other kids were largely clueless. Even some older campers walking by would stop on occasion and say "Wait, what happened?" at the current story being told. Apparently not everyone grew up obsessively reading a Greek mythology book.
And more claimings took place during this time. First, as Helena had predicted, Sabrina was claimed with the great sword of Ares. The next day, the quiet Molly was claimed by Apollo, and it was only Dresdon and Myka left.
And then it was only Myka.
She blinked in shock at the opaque cloud that had suddenly surrounded Dresdon. Nothing had prompted it as far as she could see. One second Dresdon had been cheering up this boy who'd been upset over volleyball, and the next second he was in a giant tube of cloud. A crowd formed as word spread. It was a solid two minutes before the cloud dissipated. What emerged shocked Myka again. Dresdon was dressed in completely different clothes. He frowned and looked down at his new dark blue jeans and pink Aeropostale polo shirt. His frown turned into a grin.
"Oh my gosh I've wanted these shoes forever!" he exclaimed and hopped up and down. Myka didn't see anything special about them. They looked like oversized tennis shoes that didn't seem to truly be designed for sports use. Then, Dresdon must have sensed his hair was shorter, because his hands flew up to his hair and discovered the spiky gel look he was now sporting. He looked thrilled with that, too, and kept tentatively patting the tips.
"Run your hand through it," someone said. "It won't mess up." Dresdon tried it, first pushing it back and then scrubbing his head roughly with his fingers. His hair bounced right back.
People started cheering and some walked over to congratulate him. Myka stood back feeling puzzled and wondering what sort of demigod makeover she had just witnessed.
"Aphrodite's Blessing," Helena said, suddenly appearing beside her. She tipped her in consideration. "I've never seen it on a son before."
"Aphrodite's Blessing. So, he's..."
"In Aphrodite's cabin now?" Helena turned to her. "Yes."
"Oh. ... That was a weird claiming."
"Aphrodite knows her children like to look their best, so when she claims them, she graces them for a period with whatever their idea of 'the best' is. He won't be able to change from that for at least a week." Then, Helena switched topics, "I believe I've found the solution to our dyslexia."
"What?" Myka said. "Seriously? What is it?"
Helena smiled. "I'll tell you once it works."
Myka only managed a partial smile in return. She looked back at Dresdon and the group of Aphrodite children welcoming their newest sibling.
Only me now.
