by Rick Riordan
I tried to sound confident. Sam had been on edge since we reached Texas and right now, my number one rule was making sure he didn’t end up as the main course on the demon satyr menu. Getting this done quickly was our best shot, and staying off the streets was a welcome bonus.
B was kind enough to give us directions to the closest bus stop, only a few blocks away. As we huddled under the too-small awning, fighting for every inch of shade, we watched the traffic start to pick up, the cars all decked out in orange and white—streamers, flags, bumper stickers…
Eventually, a dark-windowed charter bus pulled up with a giant “Greek Week” banner hanging on its side. The doors slid open and we were hit with a wave of rock music and air conditioning as two guys peeked out. One was tall and clean-cut, wearing a white T-shirt with orange Greek letters on it and a battered Longhorns baseball cap. The other guy’s face was covered in stubble, matching his disheveled hair, glassy eyes, and noticeable lack of shoes. His bare chest was painted with a giant white “X.”
“This them?” Baseball Hat asked. I felt a pang of jealousy—with that dimpled smirk and southern drawl, he’d clearly never had a problem talking to girls.
“I don’t remember, man. We just swore ’em in.” Dirty Guy slurped from a red Solo cup. “Ask ’em a pledge question.”
Baseball Hat cleared his throat. “What’s the first letter of the Greek alphabet?”
I paused, because the question seemed too easy. “Um…alpha?”
“Alriiiight! It’s them, man!” Dirty Guy downed his cup and gestured for us to get on the bus. He stared at Sam for a beat before throwing his right arm in the air and making a Y-shape with his fingers. “HOOK ’EM HORNS!!!”
I turned my body to talk semi-privately with Sam. “Is that, like, a secret satyr sign?”
Sam looked concerned. “I’ve never seen that in my life. I don’t think this is the right bus.”
“Of course it’s not the ‘right’ bus. But maybe it’s a better bus—a gift from the gods?” I gestured at the bus, the shirts. “I mean, they’re wearing Greek letters. The bus says ‘Greek Week.’ It’s air conditioned. And they’ve got water.” I gestured at the now-crumpled cup that Dirty Guy had tossed on the ground.
Sam sighed and shrugged.
“What’s your name?” Sam asked Baseball Hat as I climbed on board.
“I am Bacchus. God of partying.” He gestured expansively as he turned toward the back of the bus. “Welcome to my bach-a-nel.”
Sam tugged frantically at the back of my shirt. “Bacchus is Roman!”
But the doors were shut and the bus was already moving.
Fifteen minutes later, Sam and I had found seats deep in the heart of another planet. A planet apparently called Delta Sigma Lambda Eta Beta, or something like that.
A girl in cutoff shorts and a white tank top tied at the waist sidled up to Sam. “You’re cute,” she giggled, reaching out to run her fingers through his hair.
I was worried that she would touch his horns, but Sam ducked out of the way before she made contact. He was reaching for yet another plastic cup to stash in his bag, presumably for a later snack.
Dirty Guy lunged toward us, tripping over two of his friends. He leveled his gaze. “So, which one of you’s gonna be the ‘T’?”
“The tea?” I gulped, thinking about cannibals and sweet tea and wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.
“Yeah. We got the rest.” He whistled. “Guys!”
Three other dudes wearing orange and white facepaint scrambled into a line. They pulled on orange clown wigs as I read the letters painted on their bare chests. “AXES…? Oh, you need the ‘T’ for Texas.”
“HOOK ’EM HORNS!!!!” They all started whooping and yelling again.
Sam refocused after stuffing a few more cups into his backpack. “Oh, no. We can’t go to the game.”
Dead silence, as four sets of eyes narrowed at us.
Dirty Guy kept his gaze locked on Sam as he asked Letter A, “Did that pledge just say ‘no’?”
Letter A shook his head in disappointment. “We thought you were our brothers.”
“Well, actually, I’m a sat—”
I kicked Sam to shut him up.
“We, um…we’re going to Zilker Park.” I fumbled for an idea. “The Rho Rho Rho House is having a, um, tailgate party. It’s going to be, you know, epic.”
“Yeah. We’re supposed to go and stake out a spot for after the game,” said Sam, catching on.
“Rho Rho Rho?” Letter S asked, blinking.
“Yeah, it’s a new sorority,” I blundered on. “Just your types.”
“It’s our, er, pledge class gift to, um, thank the brothers for welcoming us….”
We must have done a decent sales job, or else there was something other than water in those cups. Regardless, they happily dropped us off at Zilker Park with plans to meet up after the game.
When we finally arrived at Zilker Park, we wove through hordes of sunbathers and picnickers to get to the central attraction. Barton Springs Pool was gigantic—a thousand feet long and about one hundred fifty feet wide. According to one sign, it was more than eighteen feet deep in some places. Concrete walkways stretched the pool’s length, with stairs leading into the water, but the bottom of the pool looked more like a riverbed, with mossy rocks and even some fish swimming around. The whole area was surrounded by grassy slopes and shade trees.
Seeing all that sparkling clear water reminded me of how grubby I felt.
When Sam produced two swimsuits from his backpack, I could have kissed him. (FYI, I didn’t.)
“If you want to meet a god,” Sam said, “you’ve gotta swim where the gods are.”
Five minutes later we were splashing in the pool. The water felt so wonderful that for a moment I forgot everything else. Then reality bit me on the butt.
“See Barton anywhere?” Sam asked.
“What’s he look like?”
“Sort of…godly.”
“Oh, that’s helpful.”
But the next second, I spotted a guy who did, in fact, look godly. Lounging at the water’s edge was a muscular, tanned twenty-something man with slick black hair, aviator sunglasses, and a teeny Speedo that seemed molded to his body. His skin positively glowed in the sunlight. While Sam was underwater, having what looked like an intense conversation with a guppy, I waded over to the sunbather guy.
“Hi, um, are you a god?”
The man smiled smugly. “I’ve been told so many times.”
“Great. Listen, if you could just tell me about my mom or dad, I’ll be on my way.”
The river god yawned, then tilted his perfect face to the sun liked he’d already forgotten about me.
Okay, I thought, now what?
Then I remembered the respectful way Sam had addressed Mnemosyne. Maybe that’s what I needed to do to get Barton’s attention.
I bowed. “O mighty one, I—I beg you to answer my query. I plead with you to bestow upon me the information I seek. I beseech you to—”
“Kid,” the god interrupted, “I don’t know nothing about your mom or dad. Now beat it. You’re blocking the sun.”
“But—but—”
“Hey, Zane!” Sam called.
Sam had surfaced on the opposite side of the pool. He was now standing in the shallows with a guy who looked like an aging hippie. Sam beckoned to me with a mortified expression, like What are you doing? Get over here!
I swam over.
The hippie was chuckling and shaking his head. “Did you just beseech that guy? ‘O mighty one’? Who talks like that?” His voice was low and rumbling, like boulders rolling in a deep current.
“Who—? Wait.” I looked at Sam. “Why did you call me over? Who is this old guy?”
Sam winced. “Zane, Speedo-man over there isn’t Barton.” He jerked his thumb at the hippie. “This is.”
My throat felt like several guppies were wriggling around in it.
The river god was…underwhelmi
ng. His hair hung in two skinny gray braids under a battered black cowboy hat. His crooked teeth were about as mossy as the bottom of the pool. His tie-dyed KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD T-shirt barely covered his potbelly, and his baggy green shorts were decorated with tiny pictures of aquatic creatures.
“Um…” I tried to swallow. “You’re Barton?”
“Actually, it’s Brykhon,” the river god corrected. “Son of the Titan Oceanus. Ally of the Giants in the war against the gods. Picked the wrong side, as it turns out, but that’s all water under the bridge.” He smiled at me. “Howdy, hero! You and your friend come with me so we can have us a private chat.”
He dissolved into the water, then reappeared at the base of an oak tree near the far end of the pool. Normally I wouldn’t follow a stranger, especially not one who dissolved into liquid, but Sam said, “Come on, let’s go!”
I figured Barton/Brykhon couldn’t be too bad, what with the smile and the potbelly and the little aquatic creatures on his shorts.
Sam and I swam after him. Brykhon had made himself comfortable between the roots of the tree, dangling his feet in the water. “Hot today, eh?”
Then he took off his hat and I just about leaped out of my swimsuit.
“Yikes!”
Two pointed horns sprouted from his thinning gray hair.
“Relax,” Sam said. “He’s a potamus, a river god. Check out his lower half.”
My eyes widened. I was sure I’d seen human legs a moment before, but now Brykhon’s lower half was all fish—a scaly trunk with a huge green tail fin flopping around in the pool.
“How—” I faltered. “You weren’t a merman a second ago, were you?”
“It’s the Mist, little hero.” Brykhon gave me another mossy grin. “There’s a magical veil that disguises the true appearance of gods and monsters and stuff. Now that you’re starting to accept the fact that you’re a demigod, you’ll be able to see through it more and more often. Most of the time, anyway.”
“But—”
Brykhon suddenly lunged toward the water and snatched up a half-empty bag of Doritos that was floating by.
“Humans,” Brykhon said with disgust. “They’ve made such a mess of my water. See these little pictures on my shorts?”
“Um, you don’t have shorts anymore. You turned into a fish person.”
Brykhon frowned. “Oh, right. Well, if you could see them, you’d see the Barton Springs salamander. Endangered species! My spring is the only place in the world where they live. Used to be tons of them. Now…?”
He made a strange burbling sound. A tiny speckled salamander leaped out of the water and into his hand. “Now, because of pollution, the species is nearly extinct. I do what I can to save them, but…” He shook his head wearily. The salamander skittered off into the water.
We were all quiet for a moment. I felt bad about being part of a species that killed endangered salamanders with Nacho-flavored Doritos, but I wasn’t sure what to say.
Finally Brykhon sighed. “Enough about that. I’m guessing Mnemosyne sent you here to learn about your parentage, not about my salamander.”
A thrill shot up my spine. This was the moment of truth! I was about to discover the facts about my birth—what powers I might have, what my future might hold, what my destiny—
“I’m afraid the old girl steered you in the wrong direction,” said Brykhon.
Know that sound a car makes when it comes to a screeching halt? That’s what I heard in my head.
Sam bleated in protest. “What do you mean? Mnemosyne said you had answers!”
Brykhon arched his eyebrows. “Did she? What exactly did she say?”
The goddess’s words came back to me. “Go to Austin,” I repeated. “Seek out the river god Barton.”
The god inspected his grimy fingernails. “Nothing about me telling you about your godly parent?”
Sam and I exchanged looks.
“Well, no,” I admitted. “But if you don’t have the answers, why’d we come to Austin in the first place?”
“Because Austin is the hiding place of a powerful magic item,” Brykhon said. “And I know where it is. Long ago, the gods decreed that only the next great hero could obtain this item. Succeed in retrieving it, and you’ll receive a clue to your parentage.” He turned his gaze to Sam. “Unfortunately, getting the item involves risk to you, my satyr friend.”
Sam turned white. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes.” Brykhon nodded grimly. “The item lies in the lair of the demon satyrs. And they’re not likely to give it up without a fight.”
Sam and I made our way to a three-tiered fountain with a big bronze statue in the middle, our damp swimsuits and the bag of Dorito dust (“I might get hungry later,” Sam said defensively) stowed in his backpack. Brykhon hadn’t offered any clues about how to defeat the demon satyrs. He wouldn’t even tell us exactly what this mysterious magic item was. He claimed not to know. I wasn’t sure I believed him, but what I believed didn’t matter. We were on our own.
We sat heavily on the edge of the fountain and gazed up at a winged lady in flowing robes. The statue held aloft a burning torch in one hand and a bunch of laurel leaves in the other. She stood in a chariot drawn by three fish-tailed horses. Bronze pointy-eared dudes rode the horses bareback. (Actually, just about everything about the dudes was bare.)
“Let me guess,” I said. “More Greek stuff?”
Sam shrugged. “Sort of. This is the Littlefield Fountain. Those half-horse, half-fish creatures are hippocampi. They’re pretty friendly.”
I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that half-horse, half-fish creatures could be real, much less friendly. “And the woman there is a goddess?”
Sam seesawed his hand. “Technically, no. She’s Columbia. She was the symbol of American independence until ol’ Libertas planted herself in New York Harbor.”
Right behind me, I heard an indignant hrumph. I turned, but no one was there. Sam and I were alone by the fountain. Sam didn’t look like he’d heard anything. I decided I must’ve imagined it.
“Libertas,” I said. “Uh, you mean the Statue of Liberty?”
“Yeah. Little known fact: the Statue of Liberty doesn’t represent the Roman goddess of liberty. She is the Roman goddess of liberty.”
I blinked. “Wait, you mean—”
“Yep.”
“—that huge green statue is a living, breathing—”
“Well, I don’t know about breathing. But living? Yeah. Green Girl is an actual goddess. Got herself an island right outside the most powerful city in America, where she can keep an eye on things. After that happened, the old symbol of liberty, Columbia, kind of faded from the scene.”
I looked at the bronze plaque affixed to the fountain. “Brevis a natura nobis. That’s Latin, right?”
Sam nodded. “Can you translate it?” His tone was casual, but his expression was intense, as if my answer mattered.
“I don’t have to. It’s written in English right here: A short life hath been given by Nature unto man,” I recited. “But the remembrance of a life laid down in a good cause endureth forever.”
“Mmm.” Sam focused on clouds. “I wouldn’t mind my life being remembered forever. Dying for a good cause.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “But in the meantime, if we could avoid making our short lives even shorter—”
“Oh, I’m with you,” said Sam.
“Let’s think this through,” I said. “What do we know about the demon satyrs?”
“Well,” Sam mused, “they’re demons. And they’re satyrs. Oh, and they eat other satyrs, did I mention that?”
I began pacing. “What else do you remember from the time you saw one?”
“You mean besides abject terror?”
I stared at him, thinking hard. “You said the demon satyr bellowed and then vanished after you collided with a street vendor. Sam, what was that guy selling?”
“Sweet tea. It splashed everywhere, and…” Sam’s eyes widened. “You t
hink the tea did something to—”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But if it did—”
“What are we waiting for?” Sam shot to his hooves. “Let’s get some tea and waste some demons!”
“Sam, hold up! We can’t just waltz in and start emptying tea bottles on them.”
“Why not?”
“What if it doesn’t work? You really want to be surrounded by a pack of wet, angry cannibal satyrs?”
He sat down with a thud. “Well, when you put it that way…”
“We don’t know for sure whether the tea killed the demon satyr or just scared it away or—”
“I know,” trilled a female voice behind me.
I whirled, but no one was there.
“Yoo-hoo! Up here, silly.” The statue of Columbia waved her frond at me. Her bronze face creaked as she smiled. “Hello!”
I resisted the urge to run away screaming. “Um, hi?”
Sam rose to his hooves again. He bowed deeply to the statue. “Goddess, forgive us for not acknowledging you sooner!”
“You said she wasn’t a goddess,” I whispered.
He elbowed me. “Just follow my lead, will you?” He straightened and folded his hands over his heart, “Please, Goddess, I beseech you to share your wisdom!”
“Oh, so it’s okay for you to use beseech?” I muttered under my breath. But I figured I’d better go along with it. I bowed. “Yeah, um, I beseech you, too.”
A couple of students passed by, but they didn’t seem to notice the living statue. They just smirked at Sam and me and kept walking. Maybe Austin had a lot of crazy people who talked to statues.
“Sam Greenwood.” Columbia said his name like it was the most beautiful phrase in the world. “It is so good to see you again. I remember your first visit to Austin well!”
“Um, you do?” Sam asked.
“Of course! I was out for a quick fly with the bats that night.”
“You…fly with the bats?” I asked. “Never mind. Of course you do.”
“Yes!” said the statue. “That wingless old biddy Libertas can’t fly, you know. Hmph! At any rate, I was circling over the Congress Avenue Bridge when I saw the handsomest satyr—I mean you, of course—being chased by one of those bloodthirsty Aethiopian satyrs!”