by Rick Riordan
She summoned her usual eloquence: “Hi.”
Piper’s mouth curved in the ghost of a smile. “I met these guys at the entrance to the maze. They were just charging in to find you. Said they heard your song.”
“My song?” Meg asked.
“The music!” Grover yelped. “It worked?”
“We heard the call of nature!” cried the lead dryad.
That had a different meaning for mortals, but I decided not to mention it.
“We heard the pipes of a lord of the Wild!” said another dryad. “That would be you, I suppose, satyr. Hail, satyr!”
“HAIL, SATYR!” the others echoed.
“Uh, yeah,” Grover said weakly. “Hail to you too.”
“But mostly,” said a third dryad, “we heard the cry of the Meg, daughter of the creator. Hail!”
“HAIL!” the others echoed.
That was quite enough hailing for me.
Meg narrowed her eyes. “When you say creator, do you mean my dad, the botanist, or my mom, Demeter?”
The dryads murmured among themselves.
Finally, the leader spoke: “This is a most excellent point. We meant the McCaffrey, the great grower of dryads. But now we realize that you are also the daughter of Demeter. You are twice-blessed, daughter of two creators! We are at your service!”
Meg picked her nose. “At my service, huh?” She looked at me as if to ask Why can’t you be a cool servant like this? “So, how did you guys find us?”
“We have many powers!” shouted one. “We were born from the Earth Mother’s blood!”
“The primordial strength of life flows through us!” said another.
“We nursed Zeus as a baby!” said a third. “We bore an entire race of men, the warlike Bronze!”
“We are the Meliai!” said a fourth.
“We are the mighty ash trees!” cried the fifth.
This left the last two without much to say. They simply muttered, “Ash. Yep; we’re ash.”
Piper chimed in. “So Coach Hedge got Grover’s message from the cloud nymph. Then I came to find you guys. But I didn’t know where this secret entrance was, so I went to downtown LA again.”
“By yourself?” Grover asked.
Piper’s eyes darkened. I realized she had come here first and foremost to get revenge on Medea, secondly to help us. Making it out alive…that had been a very distant third on her list of priorities.
“Anyway,” she continued, “I met these ladies downtown and we sort of made an alliance.”
Grover gulped. “But Crest said the main entrance would be a death trap! It was heavily guarded!”
“Yeah, it was….” Piper pointed at the dryads. “Not anymore.”
The dryads looked pleased with themselves.
“The ash is mighty,” said one.
The others murmured in agreement.
Herophile stepped out from her hiding place behind the toilet. “But the fires. How did you—?”
“Ha!” cried a dryad. “It would take more than the fires of a sun Titan to destroy us!” She held up her shield. One corner was blackened, but the soot was already falling away, revealing new, unblemished wood underneath.
Judging from Meg’s scowl, I could tell her mind was working overtime. That made me nervous.
“So…you guys serve me now?” she asked.
The dryads banged their shields again in unison.
“We will obey the commands of the Meg!” said the leader.
“Like, if I asked you to go get me some enchiladas—?”
“We would ask how many!” shouted another dryad. “And how hot you like your salsa!”
Meg nodded. “Cool. But first, maybe you could escort us safely out of the maze?”
“It shall be done!” said the lead dryad.
“Hold on,” Piper said. “What about…?”
She gestured to the floor tiles, where my golden nonsense words still glowed across the stone.
While kneeling in chains, I hadn’t really been able to appreciate their arrangement:
BRONZE UPON GOLD DESTROY THE TYRANT
EAST MEETS WEST AID THE WINGED
LEGIONS ARE REDEEMED UNDER GOLDEN HILLS
LIGHT THE DEPTHS GREAT STALLION’S FOAL
ONE AGAINST MANY HARKEN THE TRUMPETS
NEVER SPIRIT DEFEATED TURN RED TIDES
ANCIENT WORDS SPOKEN ENTER STRANGER’S HOME
SHAKING OLD FOUNDATIONS REGAIN LOST GLORY
“What does it mean?” Grover asked, looking at me as if I had the faintest idea.
My mind ached with exhaustion and sorrow. While Crest had distracted Medea, giving Piper time to arrive and save my friends’ lives, I had been spouting nonsense: two columns of text with a fiery margin down the middle. They weren’t even formatted in an interesting font.
“It means Apollo succeeded!” the Sibyl said proudly. “He finished the prophecy!”
I shook my head. “But I didn’t. Apollo faces death in Tarquin’s Tomb unless the doorway to the soundless god is opened by…All of that?”
Piper scanned the lines. “That’s a lot of text. Should I write it down?”
The Sibyl’s smile wavered. “You mean…you don’t see it? It’s right there.”
Grover squinted at the golden words. “See what?”
“Oh.” Meg nodded. “Okay, yeah.”
The seven dryads all leaned toward her, fascinated.
“What does it mean, great daughter of the creator?” asked the leader.
“It’s an acrostic,” Meg said. “Look.”
She jogged to the upper left corner of the room. She walked along the first letter in each line, then hopped across the margin and walked the first letters of the lines in that column, all while saying the letters out loud: “B-E-L-L-O-N-A-S D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R.”
“Wow.” Piper shook her head in amazement. “I’m still not sure what the prophecy means, about Tarquin and a soundless god and all that. But apparently you need the help of Bellona’s daughter. That means the senior praetor at Camp Jupiter: Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano.”
“HAIL, the Meg!” cried the lead dryad. “Hail, the solver of the puzzle!”
“HAIL!” the others agreed, followed by much kneeling, banging of spears on shields, and offers to retrieve enchiladas.
I might have argued with Meg’s hail-worthiness. If I hadn’t just been magically half flayed to death in burning chains, I could have solved the puzzle. I was also pretty sure Meg hadn’t known what an acrostic was until I explained it to her.
But we had bigger problems. The chamber began to shake. Dust trickled from the ceiling. A few stone tiles fell and splashed into the pool of ichor.
“We must leave,” said Herophile. “The prophecy is complete. I am free. This room will not survive.”
“I like leaving!” Grover agreed.
I liked leaving, too, but there was one promise I still meant to keep, no matter how much Styx hated me.
I knelt at the edge of the platform and stared into the fiery ichor.
“Uh, Apollo?” Meg asked.
“Should we pull him away?” asked a dryad.
“Should we push him in?” asked another.
Meg didn’t respond. Maybe she was weighing which offer sounded better. I tried to focus on the fires below.
“Helios,” I murmured, “your imprisonment is over. Medea is dead.”
The ichor churned and flashed. I felt the Titan’s half-conscious anger. Now that he was free, he seemed to be thinking why shouldn’t he vent his power from these tunnels and turn the countryside into a wasteland? He probably also wasn’t too happy about getting two pandai, some ragweed, and his evil granddaughter dumped into his nice, fiery essence.
“You have a right to be angry,” I said. “But I remember you—your brilliance, your warmth. I remember your friendship with the gods and the mortals of the earth. I can never be as great a sun deity as you were, but every day I try to honor your memory—to remember your best qualities.”
The ichor bubbled more rapidly.
I am just talking to a friend, I told myself. This is not at all like convincing an intercontinental ballistic missile not to launch itself.
“I will endure,” I told him. “I will regain the sun chariot. As long as I drive it, you will be remembered. I will keep your old path across the sky steady and true. But you know, more than anyone, that the fires of the sun don’t belong on the earth. They weren’t meant to destroy the land, but to warm it! Caligula and Medea have twisted you into a weapon. Don’t allow them to win! All you have to do is rest. Return to the ether of Chaos, my old friend. Be at peace.”
The ichor turned white-hot. I was sure my face was about to get an extreme dermal peel.
Then the fiery essence fluttered and shimmered like a pool full of moth wings—and the ichor vanished. The heat dissipated. The stone tiles disintegrated into dust and rained into the empty pit. On my arms, the terrible burns faded. The split skin mended itself. The pain ebbed to a tolerable level of I’ve-just-been-tortured-for-six-hours agony, and I collapsed, shaking and cold, on the stone floor.
“You did it!” Grover cried. He looked at the dryads, then at Meg, and laughed in amazement. “Can you feel it? The heat wave, the drought, the wildfires…they’re gone!”
“Indeed,” said the lead dryad. “The Meg’s weakling servant has saved nature! Hail to the Meg!”
“HAIL!” the other dryads chimed in.
I didn’t even have the energy to protest.
The chamber rumbled more violently. A large crack zigzagged down the middle of the ceiling.
“Let’s get out of here.” Meg turned to the dryads. “Help Apollo.”
“The Meg has spoken!” said the lead dryad.
Two dryads hauled me to my feet and carried me between them. I tried to put weight on my feet, just for dignity’s sake, but it was like roller-skating on wheels of wet macaroni.
“You know how to get there?” Grover asked the dryads.
“We do now,” said one. “It is the quickest way back to nature, and that is something we can always find.”
On a Help, I’m Going to Die scale from one to ten, exiting the maze was a ten. But since everything else I’d done that week was a fifteen, it seemed like a piece of baklava. Tunnel roofs collapsed around us. Floors crumbled. Monsters attacked, only to be stabbed to death by seven eager dryads yelling, “HAIL!”
Finally we reached a narrow shaft that slanted upward toward a tiny square of sunlight.
“This isn’t the way we came in,” Grover fretted.
“It is close enough,” said the lead dryad. “We will go first!”
No one argued. The seven dryads raised their shields and marched single file up the shaft. Piper and Herophile went next, followed by Meg and Grover. I brought up the rear, having recovered enough to crawl on my own with a minimum of weeping and gasping.
By the time I emerged into the sunlight and got to my feet, the battle lines had already been drawn.
We were back in the old bear pit, though how the shaft led us there, I didn’t know. The Meliai had formed a shield wall around the tunnel entrance. Behind them stood the rest of my friends, weapons drawn. Above us, lining the ridge of the cement bowl, a dozen pandai waited with arrows nocked in their bows. In their midst stood the great white stallion Incitatus.
When he saw me, he tossed his beautiful mane. “There he is at last. Medea couldn’t close the deal, huh?”
“Medea is dead,” I said. “Unless you run away now, you will be next.”
Incitatus nickered. “Never liked that sorceress anyway. As for surrendering…Lester, have you looked at yourself lately? You’re in no shape to issue threats. We’ve got the high ground. You’ve seen how fast pandai can shoot. I don’t know who your pretty allies with the wooden armor are, but it doesn’t matter. Come along quietly. Big C is sailing north to deal with your friends in the Bay Area, but we can catch up with the fleet easy enough. My boy has all kinds of special treats planned for you.”
Piper snarled. I suspected that Herophile’s hand on her shoulder was the only thing keeping the daughter of Aphrodite from charging the enemy all by herself.
Meg’s scimitars gleamed in the afternoon sun. “Hey, ash ladies,” she said, “how fast can you get up there?”
The leader glanced over. “Fast enough, O Meg.”
“Cool,” Meg said. Then she shouted up at the horse and his troops, “Last chance to surrender!”
Incitatus sighed. “Fine.”
“Fine, you surrender?” Meg asked.
“No. Fine, we’ll kill you. Pandai—”
“Dryads, ATTACK!” Meg yelled.
“Dryads?” Incitatus asked incredulously.
It was the last thing he ever said.
The Meliai leaped out of the pit as if it were no higher than a porch step. The dozen pandai archers, fastest shots in the West, couldn’t fire a single arrow before they were cut to dust by ashen spears.
Incitatus whinnied in panic. As the Meliai surrounded him, he reared and kicked with his golden-shod hooves, but even his great strength was no match for the primordial killer tree spirits. The stallion buckled and fell, skewered from seven directions at once.
The dryads faced Meg.
“The deed is done!” announced their leader. “Would the Meg like enchiladas now?”
Next to me, Piper looked vaguely nauseous, as if vengeance had lost some of its appeal. “I thought my voice was powerful.”
Grover whimpered in agreement. “I’ve never had nightmares about trees. That might change after today.”
Even Meg looked uncomfortable, as if just realizing what sort of power she’d been given. I was relieved to see that discomfort. It was a sure sign that Meg remained a good person. Power makes good people uneasy rather than joyful or boastful. That’s why good people so rarely rise to power.
“Let’s get out of here,” she decided.
“To where shall we get out of here, O Meg?” asked the lead dryad.
“Home,” said Meg. “Palm Springs.”
There was no bitterness in her voice as she put those words together: Home. Palm Springs. She needed to return, like the dryads, to her roots.
PIPER did not accompany us.
She said she had to get back to the Malibu house so as not to worry her father or the Hedge family. They would all be leaving for Oklahoma together tomorrow evening. Also, she had some arrangements to attend to. Her dark tone led me to believe she meant final arrangements, as in for Jason.
“Meet me tomorrow afternoon.” She handed me a folded sheet of dandelion-yellow paper—an N.H. Financials eviction notice. On the back, she’d scribbled an address in Santa Monica. “We’ll get you on your way.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but without explanation she hiked toward the nearby golf-course parking lot, no doubt to borrow a Bedrossian-quality vehicle.
The rest of us returned to Palm Springs in the red Mercedes. Herophile drove. Who knew ancient Oracles could drive? Meg sat next to her. Grover and I took the back. I kept staring forlornly at my seat, where Crest had sat only a few hours before, so anxious to learn his chords and become a god of music.
I may have cried.
The seven Meliai marched alongside our Mercedes like secret-service agents, keeping up with us easily, even when we left bumper-to-bumper traffic behind.
Despite our victory, we were a somber crew. No one offered any scintillating conversation. At one point, Herophile tried to break the ice. “I spy with my little eye—”
We responded in unison: “No.”
After that, we rode in silence.
The temperature outside cooled at least fifteen degrees. A marine layer had rolled in over the Los Angeles basin like a giant wet duster, soaking up all the dry heat and smoke. When we reached San Bernardino, dark clouds swept the hilltops, dropping curtains of rain on the parched, fire-blackened hills.
When we came over the pass and saw Palm Springs stretched out b
elow us, Grover cried with happiness. The desert was carpeted in wildflowers—marigolds and poppies, dandelions and primroses—all glistening from the rainfall that had just moved through, leaving the air cool and sweet.
Dozens of dryads waited for us on the hilltop outside the Cistern. Aloe Vera fussed over our wounds. Prickly Pear scowled and asked how we could possibly have ruined our clothes yet again. Reba was so delighted she tried to tango with me, though Caligula’s sandals really were not designed for fancy footwork. The rest of the assembled host made a wide circle around the Meliai, gawking at them in awe.
Joshua hugged Meg so hard she squeaked. “You did it!” he said. “The fires are gone!”
“You don’t have to sound so surprised,” she grumbled.
“And these…” He faced the Meliai. “I—I saw them emerge from their saplings earlier today. They said they heard a song they had to follow. That was you?”
“Yep.” Meg didn’t appear to like the way Joshua was staring slack-jawed at the ash dryads. “They’re my new minions.”
“We are the Meliai!” the leader agreed. She knelt in front of Meg. “We require guidance, O Meg! Where shall we be rooted?”
“Rooted?” Meg asked. “But I thought—”
“We can remain on the hillside where you planted us, Great Meg,” the leader said. “But if you wish us to root elsewhere, you must decide quickly! We will soon be too large and strong to transplant!”
I had a sudden image of us buying a pickup truck and filling the bed with dirt, then driving north to San Francisco with seven killer ash trees. I liked that idea. Unfortunately, I knew it wouldn’t work. Trees were not big on road trips.
Meg scratched her ear. “If you guys stay here…you’ll be okay? I mean, with the desert and all?”
“We will be fine,” said the leader.
“Though a little more shade and water would be best,” said a second ash.
Joshua cleared his throat. He brushed his fingers self-consciously through his shaggy hair. “We, um, would be most honored to have you! The force of nature is already strong here, but with the Meliai among us—”