Chapter 5

I Play Pinochle with a Horse

I had weird dreams full of flowers and gardens. Most of the vines wanted to kill me. The rest wanted to be watered.

I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The boy with the blonde hair hovered over me, smirking as he scraped drips off my chin with a spoon.

When he saw my eyes open, he asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"

I managed to croak, "What?"

He looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!"

"I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I don't…"

Somebody knocked on the door, and the boy quickly filled my mouth with pudding.

The next time I woke up, the boy was gone.

A husky blonde dude, like a surfer, stood in the corner of the bedroom keeping watch over me. He had blue eyes—at least a dozen of them—on his cheeks, his forehead, the back of his hands.

When I finally came around for good, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except that they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a deck chair on a huge porch, gazing across a meadow at green hills in the distance as I moved my hair out of my face. The breeze smelled like strawberries. There was a blanket over my legs, a pillow behind my neck. All of that was great, but my mouth felt like a scorpion had been using it for a nest. My tongue was dry and nasty and every one of my teeth hurt.

On the table next to me was a tall drink. It looked like iced apple juice, with a green straw and a paper parasol stuck through a maraschino cherry.

My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it.

"Careful," a familiar voice said.

Gretel was leaning against the porch railing, looking like she hadn't slept in a week. Under one arm, she cradled a show box. She was wearing blue jeans, a flower over her ear and in her all-amber-brown hair, no green streaks, and bright orange T-shirt that said CAMP HALF-BLOOD. Just plain old Gretel. No green skin.

So maybe I'd had a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. And…

"You saved my life," Gretel said. "I...well, the least I could do...I went back to the hill. I thought you might want this."

Reverently, she placed the shoe box in my lap.

Inside was a black-and-white bull's horn, the base jagged from being broken off, the tip splattered with dried blood. It hadn't been a nightmare.

"The Minotaur," I said.

"Um, Perci, it isn't a good idea—"

"That's what they call him in Greek myths, isn't it?" I demanded. "The Minotaur. Half man, half bull."

Gretel shifted uncomfortably. "You've been out for two days. How much do you remember?"

"My mom. Is she really…"

She looked down.

I stared across the meadow. There were groves of trees, a winding stream, acres of strawberries spread out under the blue sky. The valley was surrounded by rolling hills, and the tallest one, directly in front of us, was the one with the huge pine tree on top. Even that looked beautiful in the sunlight.

My mother was gone. The whole world should have been black and cold. Nothing should look beautiful.

"I'm sorry," Gretel sniffed. "I'm a failure. I'm the worst dryad in the world."

She moaned, stomping her foot hard on the porch and made a splatter of soil that expunged from her shoe.

"Oh, Styx!" She mumbled.

Thunder rolled across the clear sky.

As she whipped the mud off the wooden floor, I thought, Well, that settles it.

Gretel was a forest nymph, a dryad. I was ready to bet she could make an entire tree grow in a matter of minutes. But I was too miserable to care that nymphs existed, ot even Minotaurs. All that meant was my mom really had been squeezed into nothingness, dissolved into yellow light.

I was alone. An orphan. I would have to live with...Smelly Gabe? No. That would never happen. I would live on the streets first. I would pretend I was seventeen and join the nature programs. I'd do something.

Gretel was still sniffing. The poor kid—poor nymph, dryad, whatever—looked as if she expected to be hit.

I said, "I wasn't your fault."

"Yes, it was. I was supposed to protect you."

"Did my mother ask you to protect me?"

"No, but that's my job. I'm the only nymph who got a job as a keeper. At least...I was."

"But why…" I suddenly felt dizzy, my vision swimming.

"Don't strain yourself," Gretel said. "Here."

She helped me hold my glass and put the straw to my lips.

I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting apple juice. It wasn't that at all. It was chocolate-chip cookies. Liquid cookies. And not just any cookies—my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, warm and good, full of energy. My grief didn't go away, but I felt as if my mom had just brushed her hand against my cheek, giving me a cookie the way she used to when I was small, and told me everything was going to be okay.

Before I knew it, I'd drained the glass. I stared into it, sure I'd just had a warm drink, but the ice cubes hadn't even melted.

"Was it good?" Gretel asked.

I nodded.

"What did it taste like?" She sounded so wistful, I felt guilty.

"Sorry," I said. "I should've let you taste."

Her dark brown eyes got wide. "No! That's not what I meant. I just...wondered."

"Chocolate-chip cookies," I said. "My mom's. Homemade."

She sighed. "And how do you feel?"

"Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."

"That's good," she said. "That's good. I don't think you could risk drinking any more of that stuff."

"What do you mean?"

She took the empty glass from me gingerly, as if it were dynamite, and set it back on the table. "Come on. Chiron and Mr. D are waiting."

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse.

My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. Gretel offered to carry the Minotaur horn, but I held onto it. I'd paid for that souvenir the hard way. I wasn't going to let it go.

As we came around the opposite end of the house, I caught my breath.

We must've been on the north shore of Long Island, because on this side of the house, the valley marched all the way up to the water, which glittered about a mile in the distance. Between here and there, I simply couldn't process everything I was seeing. The landscape was dotted with buildings that looked like Ancient Greek architecture—an open-air pavilion, an amphitheater, a circular arena—expect that they all looked brand new, their white marble columns sparkingling in the sun. In a nearby sandpit, a dozen high school-aged kids and boys who have goat legs, satyrs, played volleyball. Canoes glided across a small lake. Kids in bright orange T-shirts like Gretel's were chasing each other around a cluster of cabins nestled in the woods. Some shot targets at an archery range. Others rode horses down a wooded trail, and, unless I was hallucinating, some of their horses had wings.

Down at the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blonde-haired boy who's spoon-fed me popcorn-flavored pudding was leaning on the porch rail next to them.

The man facing me was small, but porky. He had a red nose, big watery eyes, and curly hair so black it was almost purple. He looked like those paintings of baby angels—what do you call them, hubbubs? No, cherubs. That's it. He looked like a cherub who's turned middle-aged in a trailer park. He wore a tiger-pattern Hawaiian shirt, and he would've fit right in at one of Gabe's poker parties, except I got a feeling this guy could've out-gambled even my stepfather.

"That's Mr. D," Gretel murmured to me. "He's the camp director. Be polite. The boy, that's Anthony Chase. He's a camper, but he's been here longer than just about anybody. And you already know Chiron…"

She pointed at the guy whose back was to me.

First, I realized he was sitting in the wheelchair. Then I recognized the tweed jacket, the thinning brown hair, the scraggly beard.

"Mr. Brunner!" I cried.

The Latin teacher turned and smiled at me. His eyes had that mischievous glint they sometimes got in class when he pulled a pop quiz and made all the multiple choice answers B.

"Ah, good, Perci," she said. "Now we have four for pinochle."

He offered me a chair to the right of Mr. D, who looked at me with bloodshot eyes and heaved a great sigh. "Oh, I suppose I must say it. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood. There. Now, don't expect me to be glad to see you."

"Uh, thanks." I scooted a little farther away from him, because, if there was one thing I had learned from living with Gabe, it was how to tell when an adult had been hitting the happy juice. If Mr. D was a stranger to alcohol, I was a nymph.

"Anthony?" Mr. Brunner called to the blonde boy.

He came forward and Mr. Brunner introduced us. "This young man nursed you back to health, Perci. Anthony, my boy, why don't you go check on Perci's bunk? We'll be putting her in cabin eleven for now."

Anthony said, "Sure, Chiron."

He was probably my age, maybe a couple of inches taller, and a whole lot more athletic looking. With his deep tan and his blonde hair with bangs over her his eyes to the side, he was almost exactly what I thought a stereotypical California boy would look like, except his eyes ruined in image. They were startling gray, like storm clouds: attractive, but intimidating, too, as if he were analyzing the best way to take me down in a fight.

He glanced at the minotaur horn in my hands, then back at me. I imagined he was going to say, You killed a Minotaur! Or Wow, you're so awesome! Or something like that.

Instead he said, "You drool when you sleep."

Then he sprinted off down the lawn.

"So," I said, anxious to change the subject. "You, uh, work here, Mr. Brunner?"

"Not Mr. Brunnur," the ex-Mr. Brunner said. "I'm afraid that was a pseudonym. You may call me Chiron."

"Okay." Totally confused, I looked at the director. "And Mr. D...does that stand for something?"

Mr. D stopped shuffling the cards. He looked at me like I'd just belched loudly. "Young lady, names are powerful things. You don't just go around using them for no reason."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

"I must say, Perci," Chiron-Brunner broke in, "I'm glad to see you alive. It's been a long time since I've made a house call to a potential camper. I'd hate to think I've wasted my time."

"House call?"

"My year at Yancy Academy, to instruct you. We have satyrs at most schools, but also one nymph, of course, keeping a lookout." He pointed at Gretel, who blushed green under her fake tan skin. "But Gretel alerted me as soon as she met you. She sensed you were something special, so I decided to come upstate. I convinced the other Latin teacher to...ah, take a leave of absence."

I tried to remember the beginning of the school year. It seemed like so long ago, but I did have a fuzzy memory of there being another Latin teacher my first week at Yancy. Then, without explanation, he had disappeared and Mr. Brunner had taken the class.

"You came to Yancy just to teach me?" I asked.

Chiron nodded. "Honestly, I wasn't sure about you at first. We contacted your mother, let her know we were keeping an eye on you in case you were ready for Camp Half-Blood. But you still had so much to learn. Nevertheless, you made it here alive, and that's always the first test."

"Gretel," Mr. D said impatiently. "Are you playing or not?"

"Yes sir." She said gently, yet a little nervously as she took the fourth chair, though I didn't know why she should be so uncomfortable around a pudgy little man in a tiger-print Hawaiian shirt.

"You do know how to play pinochle?" Mr. D eyed me suspiciously.

"I'm afraid not," I said.

"I'm afraid not, sir." He said.

"Sir," I repeated. I was liking the camp director less and less.

"Well," he told me. "It is, along with gladiator fighting and Pac-Man, one of the greatest games over invented by humans. I would expect all civilized young women to know the rules."

"I'm sure the girl can learn," Chiron said.

"Please," I said. "What is this place? What am I doing here? Mr. Brun—Chiron—why would you go to Yancy Academy just to teach me?"

Mr. D snorted. "I asked the same question."

The camp director dealt with the cards. Gretel cringed a little every time one landed in her pile.

Chiron smiled at me sympathetically, the way he used to in Latin class, as if to let me know that no matter what my average was, I was his star student. He expected me to have the right answer.

"Perci," he said. "Did your mother tell you nothing?"

"She said…" I remembered her sad eyes, looking out over the sea. "She told me she was afraid to send me here, even though my father had wanted her to. She said that once I was here, I probably couldn't leave. She wanted to keep me close to her."

"Typical," Mr. D said. "That's how they usually get killed. Young lady, are you bidding or not?"

"What?" I asked.

He explained impatiently, how you bid in pinochle, and so I did.

"I'm afraid there's too much to tell," Chiron said. "I'm afraid our usual orientation film won't be sufficient."

"Orientation film?" I asked.

"No," Chiron decided. "Well, Perci. You know your friend Gretel is a dryad. You know"—he pointed to the horn in the shoe box—"that you have killed the Minotaur. No small feat, either, las. What you may not know is that great powers are at work in your life. Gods—the forces you call the Greek gods—are very much alive."

I stared at the others around the table.

I waited for somebody to yell, not! But all I got was Mr. D yelling, "Oh, a royal marriage. Trick! Trick!" He cackled as he tallied up his points.

"Mr. D," Gretel asked timidly. "Can I summon some strawberries please?"

"Eh? Oh, alright."

She waved her hand over the porch floor, and a plant of strawberries grew from that small creek of wood in just a second. She picked one from its branch and chewed on it.

"Wait," I told Chiron. "You're telling me there's such a thing as God."

"Well, now," Chiron said. "God—capital G, God. That's a different matter altogether. We shan't deal with the metaphysical."

"Metaphysical? But you were just talking about—"

"Ah, gods, plural, as in, great beings that control the forces of nature and human endeavors: the immortal gods of Olympus. That's a smaller matter."

"Smaller?"

"Yes, quite. The gods we discussed in Latin class."

"Zeus," I said. "Hera. Apollo. You mean them."

And there it was again—distant thunder on a cloudless day.

"Young lady," said Mr. D, "I would really be less casual about throwing those names around, if I were you."

"But they're stories," I said. "They're—myths, to explain lightning and the seasons and stuff. They're what people believed before there was science."

"Science!" Mr. D scoffed. "And tell me, Persephone Jackson"—I flinched when he said my real name, which I never told anybody—"what will people think of your 'science' two thousand years from now?" Mr. D continued. "Hmm? They will call it primitive mumbo jumbo. That's what. Oh, I love mortals-they have absolutely no sense of perspective. They think they've come so-o-o far. And have they, Chiron? Look at this girl and tell me."

I wasn't liking Mr. D much, but there was something about the way he called me mortal, as if...he wasn't. It was enough to put a lump in my throat, to suggest why Gretel was a little distasteful, yet dutifully asking his permission to make strawberries and wanting to say something, but held back.

"Perci," Chiron said. "You may choose to believe it or not, but the fact is that immortal means immortal. Can you imagine that for a moment, never dying? Never fading? Existing, just as you are, of all time?"

I was about to answer, off the top of my head, that it sounded like a pretty good deal, but the tone of Chiron's voice made me hesitate.

"You mean, whether people believe in you or not," I said.

"Exactly," Chiron agreed. "If you were a god, how would you like being called a myth, an old story to explain lightning? What if I told you, Persephone Jackson, that someday people would call you a myth, just created to explain how little girls can get over losing their mothers?"

My heart pounded. He was trying to make me angry for some reason, but I wasn't going to let him. I said, "I wouldn't like it. But I don't believe in gods."

"Oh, you better," Mr. D murmured. "Before one of them incinerates you."

Gretel said, "Calm down, sir. She's just lost her mother. She's in shock."

"A lucky thing, too." Mr. D grumbled, playing a card. "Bed enough I'm confined to this miserable job, working with girls who don't even believe!"

He waved his hand and a goblet appeared on the table, as if the sunlight had bent, momentarily, and woven the air into glass. The goblet filled itself with red wine.

My jaw dropped, but Chiron hardly looked.

"Mr. D," he warned. "Your restrictions."

Mr. D looked at the wine and feigned surprise.

"Dear me." He looked up at the sky and yelled, "Old hibits! Sorry!"

More thunder.

Mr. D waved his hand again, and the wineglass changed into a fresh can of Diet Coke. He sighed unhappily, popped the top of the soda, and went back to his card game.

Chiron winked at me. "Mr. D offended his father a while back, took a fancy to a wood nymph who had been declared off-limits."

"A wood nymph," I repeated, still staring at the Diet Coke can like it was from outer space.

"Dryads are wood nymphs, like me." Gretel said.

"Yes," Mr. D confessed. "Father loves to punish me. The first time, prohibition. Ghastly! Absolutely horrid ten years! The second time—well, she really was pretty, and I couldn't stay away—the second time, he sent me here. Half-Blood Hill. Summer camp for brats like you. 'Be a better influence,' he told me. 'Work with youths rather than tearing them down.' Ha! Absolutely unfair."

Mr. D sounded about six years old, like a pouting little kid.

"And…" I stammered. "You're father is…"

"Di immortales, Chiron," Mr. D said. "I thought you taught this girl the basics. My father is Zeus, of course."

I ran through D names from Greek mythology. Wine. The skin of a tiger. How Gretel asked him if she could grow a strawberry as if she learned everything from him.

"You're Dionysus," I said. "The god of wine."

Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say, these days, Gretel? Do the children said, 'Well, duh!'?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then, well, duh! Perci Jackson. Did you think I was Aphrodite, perhaps?"

"You're a god."

"Yes, child."

"A god. You."

He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purpleish fire in his eyes, a hint that was whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr. D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life.

"Would you like to test me, child?" He said quietly.

"No. No sir."

The fire died a little. He turned back to his card game. "I believe I win."

"Not quite, Mr. D," Chiron said. He sat down a straight, tallied the points, and said, "The games goes to me."

I thought Mr. D was going to vaporize Chiron right out of his wheelchair, but he just sighed through his nose, as if he were used to being beaten by the Latin teacher. He got up, and Gretel rose, too.

"I'm tired," Mr. D said. "I believe I'll take a nap before the sing-along tonight. But first, Gretel, we need to talk, again, about your less-than-perfect performance on this assignment."

Gretel looked down and sighed heavily. "Yes, sir."

Mr. D turned to me. "Cabin eleven, Perci Jackson. And mind your manners."

He swept into the farmhouse, Gretel followed miserably.

"Will Gretel be okay?" I asked Chiron.

Chiron nodded, though he looked a bit troubled. "Old Dionysus isn't really mad. He just hates his job. He's been...ah, grounded, I guess you would say, and he can't stand waiting another century before he's allowed to go back to Olympus."

"Mount Olympus," I said. "You're telling me there really is a place there?"

"Well now, there's Mount Olympus in Greece. And then there's the home of the gods, the convergence point of their powers, which did indeed used to be on Mount Olympus. It's still called Mount Olympus, out of respect to the old ways, but the palace moves, Perci, just as the gods do."

"You mean the Greek gods are here? Like...in America?"

"Well, certainly. The gods move with the heart of the West."

"The what?"

"Come now, Perci. What you call 'Western Civilization.' Do you think it's just an abstract concept? No, it's a living force. A collective consciousness that has burned bright for thousands of years. The gods are part of it. You might even say that are the source of it, or at least, that are tied so tightly to it that they couldn't possibly fade, not unless all of Western Civilization were obliterated. The fire started in Greece. Then, as you well know—or as I hope you know, since you passed my course—the heart of the fire moved to Rome, and so did the gods. Oh, different names, perhaps—Jupiter for Zeus, Venus for Aphrodite, and so on—but the same forces, the same gods.

"And then that died."

"Died? No. Did the West die? The gods simply moved, to Germany, to France, to Spain, for a while. Whatever the flame was brightest, the gods were there. They spent several centuries in England. All you need to do is look at the architecture. People do not forget the gods. Every place they've ruled, for the last three thousand years, you can see them in paintings, in statues, on the most important buildings. And yes, Perci, of course they are now in your United States. Look at your symbol, the eagle of Zeus. Look at the statue of Prometheus in Rockefeller Center, the Greek facades of your government buildings in Washington. I defy you to find any American city where the Olympians are not prominently displayed in multiple places. Like it or not—and believe me, plenty of people weren't very fond of Rome, either—America is now the heart of the flame. It is the great power of the West. And so Olympus is here. And we are here."

It was all too much, especially the fact that I seemed to be included in Chiron's we, as if I were part of some club.

"Who are you, Chiron? Who...who am I?"

Chiron smiled. He shifted his weight as if he were going to get up out of his wheelchair, but I knew that was impossible. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

"Who are you?" He mused. "Well, that's the question we all want answered, isn't it? But for now, we should get you a bunk in cabin eleven. There will be new friends to meet. And plenty of time for lessons tomorrow. Besides, there will be s'mores at the campfire tonight, and I simply adore chocolate."

And he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but his legs didn't move. HIs waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, brown velvet underwear, but he kept rising out of his chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear: it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse brown fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge brown stallion. But where it's neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacher, smoothly grafted to the horse's trunk.

"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Perci Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."