by Rick Riordan
One of the dryads huffed indignantly. I guessed she was Cholla, since she looked like a cholla plant – wispy white hair, a fuzzy white beard and large paddle-shaped ears covered with bristles. ‘No decent big-eared person would work for such a villain! What about other weaknesses? The emperor must have some!’
‘Yeah!’ Coach Hedge chimed in. ‘Is he scared of goats?’
‘Is he allergic to cactus sap?’ Aloe Vera asked hopefully.
‘Not that I know of,’ I said.
The assembled dryads looked disappointed.
‘You said you got a prophecy in Indiana?’ Joshua asked. ‘Any clues there?’
His tone was sceptical, which I could understand. A Hoosier prophecy just doesn’t have the same ring to it as a Delphic prophecy.
‘I have to find the westward palace,’ I said. ‘Which must mean Caligula’s base.’
‘No one knows where that is,’ grumbled Pear.
Perhaps it was my imagination, but Mellie and Gleeson seemed to exchange an anxious look. I waited for them to say something else, but they did not.
‘Also from the prophecy …’ I continued. ‘I have to wrest from him the crossword speaker’s breath. Meaning, I think, that I have to free the Erythraean Sibyl from his control.’
‘Does this Sibyl like crosswords?’ Reba asked. ‘I like crosswords.’
‘The Oracle gave her prophecies in the form of word puzzles,’ I explained. ‘Like crosswords. Or acrostics. The prophecy also talks about Grover bringing us here, and a lot of terrible things that will happen at Camp Jupiter in the next few days –’
‘The new moon,’ Meg muttered. ‘Coming very soon.’
‘Yes.’ I tried to contain my annoyance. Meg seemed to want me to be in two places at once, which would have been no problem for Apollo the god. For Lester the human, I could barely manage being in one place at once.
‘There’s another line,’ Grover remembered. ‘Walk the path in thine own enemy’s boots? Could that have something to do with Caligula’s booties?’
I imagined my ginormous sixteen-year-old feet crammed into a Roman toddler’s military-issued leather baby shoes. My toes began to throb.
‘I hope not,’ I said. ‘But if we could free the Sibyl from the maze I’m sure she would help us. I’d like to have more guidance before I charge off to confront Caligula in person.’
Other things I would have liked: my godly powers back, the entire firearms department of Macro’s Military Madness locked and loaded in the hands of a demigod army, an apology letter from my father, Zeus, promising never again to turn me into a human, and a bath. But, as they say, Lesters can’t be choosers.
‘That brings us back to where we started,’ Joshua said. ‘You need the Oracle freed. We need the fires shut off. To do that, we need to get through the maze, but nobody knows how.’
Gleeson Hedge cleared his throat. ‘Maybe somebody does.’
Never before had so many cacti stared at a satyr.
Cholla stroked her wispy white beard. ‘Who is this somebody?’
Hedge turned to his wife, as if to say, All yours, sweetie.
Mellie spent a few more microseconds pondering the night sky, and possibly her former life as a nebulous bachelorette.
‘Most of you know we’ve been living with the McLeans,’ she said.
‘As in Piper McLean,’ I explained, ‘daughter of Aphrodite.’
I remembered her – one of the seven demigods who had sailed aboard the Argo II. In fact, I’d been hoping to call on her and her boyfriend, Jason Grace, while I was in Southern California, to see if they would defeat the emperor and free the Oracle for me.
Wait. Scratch that. I meant, of course, that I hoped they would help me do those things.
Mellie nodded. ‘I was Mr McLean’s personal assistant. Gleeson was a full-time stay-at-home father, doing a great job –’
‘I was, wasn’t I?’ Gleeson agreed, giving Baby Chuck the chain of his nunchaku to teethe on.
‘Until everything went wrong,’ Mellie said with a sigh.
Meg McCaffrey tilted her head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Long story,’ said the cloud nymph, in a tone that implied, I could tell you, but then I’d have to turn into a storm cloud and cry a lot and zap you with lightning and kill you. ‘The point is, a couple of weeks ago, Piper had a dream about the Burning Maze. She thought she’d found a way to reach the centre. She went exploring with … that boy, Jason.’
That boy. My finely tuned senses told me Mellie was not happy with Jason Grace, son of Jupiter.
‘When they came back …’ Mellie paused, her lower half swirling in a corkscrew of cloud stuff. ‘They said they had failed. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Piper hinted that they had encountered something down there that … rattled them.’
The stone walls of the Cistern seemed to creak and shift in the cooling night air, as if sympathetically vibrating with the word rattled. I thought of my dream about the Sibyl in fiery chains, apologizing to someone after delivering terrible news: I am sorry. I would spare you if I could. I would spare her.
Had she been addressing Jason, or Piper, or both of them? If so, and if they had actually found the Oracle …
‘We need to talk to those demigods,’ I decided.
Mellie lowered her head. ‘I can’t take you. Going back … it would break my heart.’
Hedge shifted Baby Chuck to his other arm. ‘Maybe I could –’
Mellie shot him a warning look.
‘Yeah, I can’t go either,’ Hedge muttered.
‘I’ll take you,’ Grover volunteered, though he looked more exhausted than ever. ‘I know where the McLean house is. Just, uh, maybe we can wait until the morning?’
A sense of relief washed over the assembled dryads. Their spikes relaxed. The chlorophyll came back into their complexions. Grover may not have solved their problems, but he had given them hope – at the very least, a sense that we could do something.
I gazed at the circle of hazy orange sky above the Cistern. I thought about the fires blazing to the west, and what might be going on up north at Camp Jupiter. Sitting at the bottom of a shaft in Palm Springs, unable to help the Roman demigods or even know what was happening to them, I could empathize with the dryads – rooted in place, watching in despair as the wildfires got closer and closer.
I didn’t want to quash the dryads’ newfound hopes, but I felt compelled to say, ‘There’s more. Your sanctuary might not be safe for much longer.’
I told them what Incitatus had said to Caligula on the phone. And, no, I never thought I would be reporting on an eavesdropped conversation between a talking horse and a dead Roman emperor.
Aloe Vera trembled, shaking several highly medicinal triangle spikes from her hair. ‘H-how could they know about Aeithales? They’ve never bothered us here!’
Grover winced. ‘I don’t know, guys. But … the horse did seem to imply that Caligula was the one who had destroyed it years ago. He said something like I know you think you took care of it. But that place is still dangerous.’
Joshua’s bark-brown face turned even darker. ‘Doesn’t make sense. Even we don’t know what this place was.’
‘A house,’ Meg said. ‘A big house on stilts. These cisterns … they were support columns, geothermal cooling, water supply.’
The dryads bristled all over again. They said nothing, waiting for Meg to continue.
She drew in her wet feet, making her look even more like a nervous squirrel ready to spring away. I remembered how she’d wanted to leave here as soon as we arrived, how she’d warned it wasn’t safe. I recalled one line of the prophecy we hadn’t yet discussed: Demeter’s daughter finds her ancient roots.
‘Meg,’ I said, as gently as I could, ‘how do you know this place?’
Her expression turned tense but defiant, as if she wasn’t sure whether to burst into tears or fight me.
‘Because it was my home,’ she said. ‘My dad built Aeithales.’
&nb
sp; 11
No touchy the god
Unless your visions are good
And you wash your hands
You don’t do that.
You don’t just announce that your dad built a mysterious house on a sacred spot for dryads, then get up and leave without an explanation.
So, of course, that’s what Meg did.
‘See you in the morning,’ she announced to no one in particular.
She trudged up the ramp, still barefoot despite traipsing past twenty different species of cactus, and slipped into the dark.
Grover looked around at his assembled comrades. ‘Um, well, good meeting, everybody.’
He promptly fell over, snoring before he hit the ground.
Aloe Vera gave me a concerned glance. ‘Should I go after Meg? She might need more aloe goo.’
‘I’ll check on her,’ I promised.
The nature spirits began cleaning up their dinner trash (dryads are very conscientious about that sort of thing), while I went in search of Meg McCaffrey.
I found her five feet off the ground, perched on the rim of the furthest brick cylinder, facing inward and staring into the shaft below. Judging from the warm strawberry fragrance wafting from the cracks in the stone, I guessed this was the same well we’d used to exit the Labyrinth.
‘You’re making me nervous,’ I said. ‘Would you come down?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ I muttered.
I climbed up, despite the fact that scaling walls really wasn’t in my skill set. (Oh, who am I kidding? In my present state, I didn’t have a skill set.)
I joined Meg on the edge, dangling my feet over the abyss from which we’d escaped … Had it really been only this morning? I couldn’t see the net of strawberry plants below in the shadows, but their smell was powerful and exotic in the desert setting. Strange how a common thing can become uncommon in a new environment. Or, in my case, how an uncommonly amazing god can become so very common.
The night sapped the colour from Meg’s clothes, making her look like a greyscale traffic light. Her runny nose glistened. Behind the grimy lenses of her glasses, her eyes were wet. She twisted one gold ring, then the other, as if adjusting knobs on an old-fashioned radio.
We’d had a long day. The silence between us felt comfortable, and I wasn’t sure I could tolerate any further scary information about our Hoosier prophecy. On the other hand, I needed explanations. Before I went to sleep in this place again, I wanted to know how safe or unsafe it was, and whether I might wake up with a talking horse in my face.
My nerves were shot. I considered throttling my young master and yelling, TELL ME NOW!, but I decided that might not be sensitive to her feelings.
‘Would you like to talk about it?’ I asked gently.
‘No.’
Not a huge surprise. Even under the best of circumstances, Meg and conversation were awkward acquaintances.
‘If Aeithales is the place mentioned in the prophecy,’ I said, ‘your ancient roots, then it might be important to know about it so … we can stay alive?’
Meg looked over. She didn’t order me to leap into the strawberry pit, or even to shut up. Instead, she said, ‘Here,’ and grabbed my wrist.
I had become used to waking visions – being yanked backwards down memory lane whenever godly experiences overloaded my mortal neurons. This was different. Rather than my own past, I found myself plunged into Meg McCaffrey’s, seeing her memories from her point of view.
I stood in one of the greenhouses before the plants grew wild. Well-ordered rows of new cactus pups lined the metal shelves, each clay pot fitted with a digital thermometer and moisture gauge. Misting hoses and grow lights hovered overhead. The air was warm, but pleasantly so, and smelled of freshly turned earth.
Wet gravel crunched under my feet as I followed my father on his rounds – Meg’s father, I mean.
From my vantage point as a tiny girl, I saw him smiling down at me. As Apollo I’d met him before in other visions – a middle-aged man with dark curly hair and a broad, freckled nose. I’d witnessed him in New York, giving Meg a red rose from her mother, Demeter. I’d also seen his dead body splayed on the steps of Grand Central Station, his chest a ruin of knife or claw marks, on the day Nero became Meg’s stepfather.
In this memory of the greenhouse, Mr McCaffrey didn’t look much younger than in those other visions. The emotions I sensed from Meg told me she was about five years old, the same age she’d been when she and her father wound up in New York. But Mr McCaffrey looked so much happier in this scene, so much more at ease. As Meg gazed into her father’s face, I was overwhelmed by her pure joy and contentment. She was with Daddy. Life was wonderful.
Mr McCaffrey’s green eyes sparkled. He picked up a potted cactus pup and knelt to show Meg. ‘I call this one Hercules,’ he said, ‘because he can withstand anything!’
He flexed his arm and said, ‘GRRRR!’ which sent little Meg into a fit of giggles.
‘Er-klees!’ she said. ‘Show me more plants!’
Mr McCaffrey set Hercules back on the shelf, then held up one finger like a magician: Watch this! He dug into the pocket of his denim shirt and presented his cupped fist to Meg.
‘Try to open it,’ he said.
Meg pulled at his fingers. ‘I can’t!’
‘You can. You’re very strong. Try really hard!’
‘GRRR!’ said little Meg. This time she managed to open his hand, revealing seven hexagonal seeds, each the size of a nickel. Inside their thick green skins, the seeds glowed faintly, making them look like a fleet of tiny UFOs.
‘Ooh,’ said Meg. ‘Can I eat them?’
Her father laughed. ‘No, sweetheart. These are very special seeds. Our family has been trying to produce seeds like this for –’ he whistled softly – ‘a long time. And when we plant them …’
‘What?’ Meg asked breathlessly.
‘They will be very special,’ her dad promised. ‘Even stronger than Hercules!’
‘Plant them now!’
Her father ruffled her hair. ‘Not yet, Meg. They’re not ready. But when it’s time I’ll need your help. We’ll plant them together. Will you promise to help me?’
‘I promise,’ she said, with all the solemnity of her five-year-old heart.
The scene shifted. Meg padded barefoot into the beautiful living room of Aeithales, where her father stood facing a wall of curved glass, overlooking the night-time city lights of Palm Springs. He was talking on the phone, his back to Meg. She was supposed to be asleep, but something had woken her – maybe a bad dream, maybe the sense that Daddy was upset.
‘No, I don’t understand,’ he was saying into the phone. ‘You have no right. This property isn’t … Yes, but my research can’t … That’s impossible!’
Meg crept forward. She loved being in the living room. Not just for the pretty view but for the way the polished hardwood felt against her bare feet – smooth and cool and silky, like she was gliding across a living sheet of ice. She loved the plants Daddy kept on the shelves and in giant pots all around the room – cacti blooming in dozens of colours, Joshua trees that formed living columns, holding up the roof, growing into the ceiling and spreading across it in a web of fuzzy branches and green spiky clusters. Meg was too young to understand that Joshua trees weren’t supposed to do that. It seemed completely reasonable to her that vegetation would weave together to help form the house.
Meg also loved the big circular well in the centre of the room – the Cistern, Daddy called it – railed off for safety, but so wonderful for how it cooled the whole house and made the place feel safe and anchored. Meg loved to race down the ramp and dip her feet in the cool water of the pool at the bottom, though Daddy always said, Don’t soak too long! You might turn into a plant!
Most of all, she loved the big desk where Daddy worked – the trunk of a mesquite tree that grew straight up through the floor and plunged back down again, like the coil of a sea serpent breaching the waves
, leaving just enough of an arc to form the piece of furniture. The top of the trunk was smooth and level, a perfect work surface. Tree hollows provided cubbyholes for storage. Leafy sprigs curved up from the desktop, making a frame to hold Daddy’s computer monitor. Meg had once asked if he’d hurt the tree when he carved the desk out of it, but Daddy had chuckled.
‘No, sweetheart, I would never hurt the tree. Mesquite offered to shape herself into a desk for me.’
This, too, did not seem unusual to five-year-old Meg – calling a tree she, talking to it the way you would speak to a person.
Tonight, though, Meg didn’t feel so comfortable in the living room. She didn’t like the way Daddy’s voice was shaking. She reached his desk and found, instead of the usual seed packets and drawings and flowers, a stack of mail – typed letters, thick stapled documents, envelopes – all in dandelion yellow.
Meg couldn’t read, but she didn’t like those letters. They looked important and bossy and angry. The colour hurt her eyes. It wasn’t as nice as real dandelions.
‘You don’t understand,’ Daddy said into the phone. ‘This is more than my life’s work. It’s centuries. Thousands of years’ work … I don’t care if that sounds crazy. You can’t just –’
He turned and froze, seeing Meg at his desk. A spasm crossed his face – his expression shifting from anger to fear to concern, then settling into a forced cheerfulness. He slipped his phone into his pocket.
‘Hey, sweetheart,’ he said, his voice stretched thin. ‘Couldn’t sleep, huh? Yeah, me neither.’
He walked to the desk, swept the dandelion-yellow papers into a tree hollow and offered Meg his hand. ‘Want to check the greenhouses?’
The scene changed again.
A jumbled, fragmentary memory: Meg was wearing her favourite outfit, a green dress and yellow leggings. She liked it because Daddy said it made her look like one of their greenhouse friends – a beautiful, growing thing. She stumbled down the driveway in the dark, following Daddy, her backpack stuffed with her favourite blanket because Daddy said they had to hurry. They could only take what they could carry.