by Rick Riordan
“Hey, bugs!” Meg’s scimitars flashed in her hands, making her the new shiniest thing in the clearing.
Can we take a moment to appreciate that Meg did this on purpose? Terrified of insects, she could have fled and left me to be devoured. Instead, she chose to risk her life by distracting three tank-size ants. Throwing garbage at street thugs was one thing. But this…this was an entirely new level of foolishness. If I lived, I might have to nominate Meg McCaffrey for Best Sacrifice at the next Demi Awards.
Two of the ants charged at Meg. The third stayed on me, though he turned his head long enough for me to sprint to one side.
Meg ran between her opponents, her golden blades severing a leg from each. Their mandibles snapped at empty air. The soldier bugs wobbled on their five remaining legs, tried to turn, and bonked heads.
Meanwhile, the third ant charged me. In a panic, I threw my combat ukulele. It bounced off the ant’s forehead with a dissonant twang.
I tugged my sword free of its scabbard. I’ve always hated swords. Such inelegant weapons, and they require you to be in close combat. How unwise, when you can shoot your enemies with an arrow from across the world!
The ant spit acid, and I tried to swat away the goop.
Perhaps that wasn’t the brightest idea. I often got sword fighting and tennis confused. At least some of the acid splattered the ant’s eyes, which bought me a few seconds. I valiantly retreated, raising my sword only to find that the blade had been eaten away, leaving me nothing but a steaming hilt.
“Oh, Meg?” I called helplessly.
She was otherwise occupied. Her swords whirled in golden arcs of destruction, lopping off leg segments, slicing antennae. I had never seen a dimachaerus fight with such skill, and I had seen all the best gladiators in combat. Unfortunately, her blades only sparked off the ants’ thick main carapaces. Glancing blows and dismemberment did not faze them at all. As good as Meg was, the ants had more legs, more weight, more ferocity, and slightly more acid-spitting ability.
My own opponent snapped at me. I managed to avoid its mandibles, but its armored face bashed the side of my head. I staggered and fell. One ear canal seemed to fill with molten iron.
My vision clouded. Across the clearing, the other ants flanked Meg, using their acid to herd her toward the woods. She dove behind a tree and came up with only one of her blades. She tried to stab the closest ant but was driven back by acid cross fire. Her leggings were smoking, peppered with holes. Her face was tight with pain.
“Peaches,” I muttered to myself. “Where is that stupid diaper demon when we need him?”
The karpos did not appear. Perhaps the presence of the geyser gods or some other force in the woods kept him away. Perhaps the board of directors had a rule against pets.
The third ant loomed over me, its mandibles foaming with green saliva. Its breath smelled worse than Hephaestus’s work shirts.
My next decision I could blame on my head injury. I could tell you I wasn’t thinking clearly, but that isn’t true. I was desperate. I was terrified. I wanted to help Meg. Mostly I wanted to save myself. I saw no other option, so I dove for my ukulele.
I know. I promised on the River Styx not to play music until I was a god once more. But even such a dire oath can seem unimportant when a giant ant is about to melt your face off.
I grabbed the instrument, rolled onto my back, and belted out “Sweet Caroline.”
Even without my oath, I would only have done something like that in the most extreme emergency. When I sing that song, the chances of mutually assured destruction are too great. But I saw no other choice. I gave it my utmost effort, channeling all the saccharine schmaltz I could muster from the 1970s.
The giant ant shook its head. Its antennae quivered. I got to my feet as the monster crawled drunkenly toward me. I put my back to the geyser and launched into the chorus.
The Dah! Dah! Dah! did the trick. Blinded by disgust and rage, the ant charged. I rolled aside as the monster’s momentum carried it forward, straight into the muddy cauldron.
Believe me, the only thing that smells worse than Hephaestus’s work shirts is a myrmeke boiling in its own shell.
Somewhere behind me, Meg screamed. I turned in time to see her second sword fly from her hand. She collapsed as one of the myrmekes caught her in its mandibles.
“NO!” I shrieked.
The ant did not snap her in half. It simply held her—limp and unconscious.
“Meg!” I yelled again. I strummed the ukulele desperately. “Sweet Caroline!”
But my voice was gone. Defeating one ant had taken all my energy. (I don’t think I have ever written a sadder sentence than that.) I tried to run to Meg’s aid, but I stumbled and fell. The world turned pale yellow. I hunched on all fours and vomited.
I have a concussion, I thought, but I had no idea what to do about it. It seemed like ages since I had been a god of healing.
I may have lay in the mud for minutes or hours while my brain slowly gyrated inside my skull. By the time I managed to stand, the two ants were gone.
There was no sign of Meg McCaffrey.
I’m on a roll now
Boiling, burning, throwing up
Lions? Hey, why not?
I STUMBLED THROUGH the glade, shouting Meg’s name. I knew it was pointless, but yelling felt good. I looked for signs of broken branches or trampled ground. Surely two tank-size ants would leave a trail I could follow. But I was not Artemis; I did not have my sister’s skill with tracking. I had no idea which direction they’d taken my friend.
I retrieved Meg’s swords from the mud. Instantly, they changed into gold rings—so small, so easily lost, like a mortal life. I may have cried. I tried to break my ridiculous combat ukulele, but the Celestial bronze instrument defied my attempts. Finally, I yanked off the A string, threaded it through Meg’s rings, and tied them around my neck.
“Meg, I will find you,” I muttered.
Her abduction was my fault. I was sure of this. By playing music and saving myself, I had broken my oath on the River Styx. Instead of punishing me directly, Zeus or the Fates or all the gods together had visited their wrath upon Meg McCaffrey.
How could I have been so foolish? Whenever I angered the other gods, those closest to me were struck down. I’d lost Daphne because of one careless comment to Eros. I’d lost the beautiful Hyacinthus because of a quarrel with Zephyros. Now my broken oath would cost Meg her life.
No, I told myself. I won’t allow it.
I was so nauseous, I could barely walk. Someone seemed to be inflating a balloon inside my brain. Yet I managed to stumble to the rim of Pete’s geyser.
“Pete!” I shouted. “Show yourself, you cowardly telemarketer!”
Water shot skyward with a sound like the blast of an organ’s lowest pipe. In the swirling steam, the palikos appeared, his mud-gray face hardening with anger.
“You call me a TELEMARKETER?” he demanded. “We run a full-service PR firm!”
I doubled over and vomited in his crater, which I thought an appropriate response.
“Stop that!” Pete complained.
“I need to find Meg.” I wiped my mouth with a shaky hand. “What would the myrmekes do with her?”
“I don’t know!”
“Tell me or I will not complete your customer service survey.”
Pete gasped. “That’s terrible! Your feedback is important!” He floated down to my side. “Oh, dear…your head doesn’t look good. You’ve got a big gash on your scalp, and there’s blood. That must be why you’re not thinking clearly.”
“I don’t care!” I yelled, which only made the pounding in my head worse. “Where is the myrmekes’ nest?”
Pete wrung his steamy hands. “Well, that’s what we were talking about earlier. That’s where Paulie went. The nest is the only entrance.”
“To what?”
“To the Grove of Dodona.”
My stomach solidified into a pack of ice, which was unfair, because I needed one for
my head. “The ant nest…is the way to the grove?”
“Look, you need medical attention. I told Paulie we should have a first-aid station for visitors.” He fished around in his nonexistent pockets. “Let me just mark the location of the Apollo cabin—”
“If you pull out a brochure,” I warned, “I will make you eat it. Now, explain how the nest leads to the grove.”
Pete’s face turned yellow, or perhaps that was just my vision getting worse. “Paulie didn’t tell me everything. There’s this thicket of woods that’s grown so dense, nobody can get in. I mean, even from above, the branches are like…” He laced his muddy fingers, then caused them to liquefy and melt into one another, which made his point quite well.
“Anyway”—he pulled his hands apart—“the grove is in there. It could have been slumbering for centuries. Nobody on the board of directors even knew about it. Then, all of a sudden, the trees started whispering. Paulie figured those darned ants must have burrowed into the grove from underneath, and that’s what woke it up.”
I tried to make sense of that. It was difficult with a swollen brain. “Which way is the nest?”
“North of here,” Pete said. “Half a mile. But, man, you are in no shape—”
“I must! Meg needs me!”
Pete grabbed my arm. His grip was like a warm wet tourniquet. “She’s got time. If they carried her off in one piece, that means she’s not dead yet.”
“She will be soon enough!”
“Nah. Before Paulie…before he disappeared, he went into that nest a few times looking for the tunnel to the grove. He told me those myrmekes like to goop up their victims and let them, um, ripen until they’re soft enough for the hatchlings to eat.”
I made an un-godlike squeak. If there had been anything left in my stomach, I would have lost it. “How long does she have?”
“Twenty-four hours, give or take. Then she’ll start to…um, soften.”
It was difficult to imagine Meg McCaffrey softening under any circumstances, but I pictured her alone and scared, encased in insect goop, tucked in some larder of carcasses in the ants’ nest. For a girl who hated bugs—Oh, Demeter had been right to hate me and keep her children away from me. I was a terrible god!
“Go get some help,” Pete urged. “The Apollo cabin can heal that head wound. You’re not doing your friend any favors by charging after her and getting yourself killed.”
“Why do you care what happens to us?”
The geyser god looked offended. “Visitor satisfaction is always our top priority! Besides, if you find Paulie while you’re in there…”
I tried to stay angry at the palikos, but the loneliness and worry on his face mirrored my own feelings. “Did Paulie explain how to navigate the ants’ nest?”
Pete shook his head. “Like I said, he didn’t want me to follow him. The myrmekes are dangerous enough. And if those other guys are still wandering around—”
“Other guys?”
Pete frowned. “Didn’t I mention that? Yeah. Paulie saw three humans, heavily armed. They were looking for the grove too.”
My left leg started thumping nervously, as if it missed its three-legged race partner. “How did Paulie know what they were looking for?”
“He heard them talking in Latin.”
“Latin? Were they campers?”
Pete spread his hands. “I—I don’t think so. Paulie described them like they were adults. He said one of them was the leader. The other two addressed him as imperator.”
The entire planet seemed to tilt. “Imperator.”
“Yeah, you know, like in Rome—”
“Yes, I know.” Suddenly, too many things made sense. Pieces of the puzzle flew together, forming one huge picture that smacked me in the face. The Beast…Triumvirate Holdings…adult demigods completely off the radar.
It was all I could do to avoid pitching forward into the geyser. Meg needed me more than ever. But I would have to do this right. I would have to be careful—even more careful than when I gave the fiery horses of the sun their yearly vaccinations.
“Pete,” I said, “do you still oversee sacred oaths?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“Then hear my solemn oath!”
“Uh, the thing is, you’ve got this aura around you like you just broke a sacred oath, maybe one you swore on the River Styx? And if you break another oath with me—”
“I swear that I will save Meg McCaffrey. I will use every means at my disposal to bring her safely from the ants’ lair, and this oath supersedes any previous oath I have made. This I swear upon your sacred and extremely hot waters!”
Pete winced. “Well, okay. It’s done now. But keep in mind that if you don’t keep that oath, if Meg dies, even if it’s not your fault…you’ll face the consequences.”
“I am already cursed for breaking my earlier oath! What does it matter?”
“Yeah, but see, those River Styx oaths can take years to destroy you. They’re like cancer. My oaths…” Pete shrugged. “If you break it, there’s nothing I can do to stop your punishment. Wherever you are, a geyser will instantly blast through the ground at your feet and boil you alive.”
“Ah…” I tried to stop my knees from knocking. “Yes, of course I knew that. I stand by my oath.”
“You’ve got no choice now.”
“Right. I think I’ll—I’ll go get healed.”
I staggered off.
“Camp is the other direction,” Pete said.
I changed course.
“Remember to complete our survey online!” Pete called after me. “Just curious, on a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your overall satisfaction with the Woods at Camp Half-Blood?”
I didn’t reply. As I stumbled into the darkness, I was too busy contemplating, on a scale of one to ten, the pain I might have to endure in the near future.
I didn’t have the strength to make it back to camp. The farther I walked, the clearer that became. My joints were pudding. I felt like a marionette, and as much as I’d enjoyed controlling mortals from above in the past, I did not relish being on the other end of the strings.
My defenses were at level zero. The smallest hellhound or dragon could have easily made a meal of the great Apollo. If an irritated badger had taken issue with me, I would have been doomed.
I leaned against a tree to catch my breath. The tree seemed to push me away, whispering in a voice I remembered so well: Keep moving, Apollo. You can’t rest here.
“I loved you,” I muttered.
Part of me knew I was delirious—imagining things only because of my concussion—but I swore I could see the face of my beloved Daphne rising from each tree trunk I passed, her features floating under the bark like a mirage of wood—her slightly crooked nose, her offset green eyes, those lips I had never kissed but never stopped dreaming of.
You loved every pretty girl, she scolded. And every pretty boy, for that matter.
“Not like you,” I cried. “You were my first true love. Oh, Daphne!”
Wear my crown, she said. And repent.
I remembered chasing her—her lilac scent on the breeze, her lithe form flitting through the dappled light of the forest. I pursued her for what seemed like years. Perhaps it was.
For centuries afterward, I blamed Eros.
In a moment of recklessness, I had ridiculed Eros’s archery skills. Out of spite, he struck me with a golden arrow. He bent all my love toward the beautiful Daphne, but that was not the worst of it. He also struck Daphne’s heart with a lead arrow, leeching all possible affection she might have had for me.
What people do not understand: Eros’s arrows can’t summon emotion from nothing. They can only cultivate potential that is already there. Daphne and I could have been a perfect pair. She was my true love. She could have loved me back. Yet thanks to Eros, my love-o-meter was cranked to one hundred percent, while Daphne’s feelings turned to pure hate (which is, of course, only the flip side of love). Nothing is more tragic than loving
someone to the depths of your soul and knowing they cannot and will not ever love you back.
The stories say I chased her on a whim, that she was just another pretty dress. The stories are wrong. When she begged Gaea to turn her into a laurel tree in order to escape me, part of my heart hardened into bark as well. I invented the laurel wreath to commemorate my failure—to punish myself for the fate of my greatest love. Every time some hero wins the laurels, I am reminded of the girl I can never win.
After Daphne, I swore I would never marry. Sometimes I claimed that was because I couldn’t decide between the Nine Muses. A convenient story. The Nine Muses were my constant companions, all of them beautiful in their own way. But they never possessed my heart like Daphne did. Only one other person ever affected me so deeply—the perfect Hyacinthus—and he, too, was taken from me.
All these thoughts rambled through my bruised brain. I staggered from tree to tree, leaning against them, grabbing their lowest branches like handrails.
You cannot die here, Daphne whispered. You have work to do. You made an oath.
Yes, my oath. Meg needed me. I had to…
I fell face forward in the icy mulch.
How long I lay there, I’m not sure.
A warm snout breathed in my ear. A rough tongue lapped my face. I thought I was dead and Cerberus had found me at the gates of the Underworld.
Then the beast pushed me over onto my back. Dark tree branches laced the sky. I was still in the forest. The golden visage of a lion appeared above me, his amber eyes beautiful and deadly. He licked my face, perhaps trying to decide if I would make a good supper.
“Ptfh.” I spit mane fur out of my mouth.
“Wake up,” said a woman’s voice, somewhere to my right. It wasn’t Daphne, but it was vaguely familiar.
I managed to raise my head. Nearby, a second lion sat at the feet of a woman with tinted glasses and a silver-and-gold tiara in her braided hair. Her batik dress swirled with images of fern fronds. Her arms and hands were covered in henna tattoos. She looked different than she had in my dream, but I recognized her.
“Rhea,” I croaked.
She inclined her head. “Peace, Apollo. I don’t want to bum you out, but we need to talk.”