by Rick Riordan
Sure, I may have fired a quiverful of amazing shots in Tarquin’s tomb. That didn’t mean I could do it again. If I tried to demonstrate proper shooting techniques in front of a whole cohort and ended up hitting one of Meg’s unicorns in the butt, I would die of embarrassment long before the zombie poison got me.
“Okay, everyone,” I said. “I suppose we can start.”
Dakota was rummaging through his water-stained quiver, trying to find an arrow that wasn’t warped. Apparently, he thought it was a great idea to store his archery supplies in the sauna. Thomas and another legionnaire (Marcus?) were sword-fighting with their bows. The legion’s standard-bearer, Jacob, was drawing his bow with the butt of the arrow directly at eye level, which explained why his left eye was covered in a patch from the morning’s lessons. He now seemed eager to blind himself completely.
“C’mon, guys!” said Lavinia. She had sneaked in late without being noticed (one of her superpowers) and took it upon herself to help me call the troops to order. “Apollo might know stuff!”
This was how I knew I had hit rock bottom: the highest praise I could receive from a mortal was that I “might know stuff.”
I cleared my throat. I’d faced much bigger audiences. Why was I so nervous? Oh, right. Because I was a horribly incompetent sixteen-year-old.
“So…let’s talk about how to aim.” My voice cracked, naturally. “Wide stance. Full draw. Then find your target with your dominant eye. Or, in Jacob’s case, with your one working eye. Aim along your sight pin, if you have one.”
“I don’t have a sight pin,” said Marcus.
“It’s the little circle thingie right there.” Lavinia showed him.
“I have a sight pin,” Marcus corrected himself.
“Then you let fly,” I said. “Like this.”
I shot at the nearest target—then at the target next farthest out, then at the next—firing again and again in a kind of trance.
Only after my twentieth shot did I realize I’d landed all bull’s-eyes, two in each target, the farthest about two hundred yards away. Child’s play for Apollo. For Lester, quite impossible.
The legionnaires stared at me, their mouths hanging open.
“We’re supposed to do that?” Dakota demanded.
Lavinia punched my forearm. “See, you guys? I told you Apollo doesn’t suck that much!”
I had to agree with her. I felt oddly not suckish.
The display of marksmanship hadn’t drained my energy. Nor did it feel like the temporary bursts of godly power I’d experienced before. I was tempted to ask for another quiver to see if I could keep shooting at the same skill level, but I was afraid to press my luck.
“So…” I faltered. “I, uh, don’t expect you to be that good right away. I was only demonstrating what’s possible with a lot of practice. Let’s give it a try, shall we?”
I was relieved to take the focus off myself. I organized the cohort into a firing line and made my way down the ranks, offering advice. Despite his warped arrows, Dakota was not terrible. He actually hit the target a few times. Jacob managed not to blind himself in the other eye. Thomas and Marcus sent most of their arrows skittering across the dirt, ricocheting off rocks and into the trenches, which elicited shouts of “Hey, watch it!” from the ditch-digging Fourth Cohort.
After an hour of frustration with a regular bow, Lavinia gave up and pulled out her manubalista. Her first bolt knocked down the fifty-yard target.
“Why do you insist on using that slow-loading monstrosity?” I asked. “If you’re so ADHD, wouldn’t a regular bow give you more instant satisfaction?”
Lavinia shrugged. “Maybe, but the manubalista makes a statement. Speaking of which”—she leaned toward me, her expression turning serious—“I need to talk to you.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
“No, it’s not. I—”
In the distance, a horn blew.
“Okay, guys!” Dakota called. “Time to rotate activities! Good team effort!”
Lavinia punched me in the arm again. “Later, Lester.”
The Fifth Cohort dropped their weapons and ran toward the next activity, leaving me to retrieve all their arrows. Cretins.
The rest of the afternoon, I stayed at the firing range, working with each cohort in turn. As the hours wore on, both the shooting and the teaching became less intimidating for me. By the time I was wrapping up work with my last group, the First Cohort, I was convinced that my improved archery skills were here to stay.
I didn’t know why. I still couldn’t shoot at my old godly level, but I was definitely better now than the average demigod archer or Olympic gold medalist. I had started to “jive.” I considered pulling out the Arrow of Dodona to brag See what I can do? But I didn’t want to jinx myself. Besides, knowing that I was dying of zombie poison on the eve of a major battle took some of the thrill out of being able to shoot bull’s-eyes again.
The Romans were duly impressed. Some of them even learned a little, like how to fire an arrow without blinding yourself or killing the guy next to you. Still, I could tell they were more excited about the other activities they’d done. I overheard a lot of whispering about unicorns and Hazel’s supersecret ghoul-fighting techniques. Larry from the Third Cohort had enjoyed boarding ships so much he declared that he wanted to be a pirate when he grew up. I suspected most of the legionnaires had even enjoyed ditch-digging more than my class.
It was late evening when the final horn blew and the cohorts tromped back to camp. I was hungry and exhausted. I wondered if this was how mortal teachers felt after a full day of classes. If so, I didn’t see how they managed. I hoped they were richly compensated with gold, diamonds, and rare spices.
At least the cohorts seemed to be in an upbeat mood. If the praetors’ goal had been to take the troops’ minds off their fears and raise morale on the eve of battle, then our afternoon had been a success. If the goal had been to train the legion to successfully repel our enemies…then I was less than hopeful. Also, all day long, everyone had carefully avoided addressing the worst thing about tomorrow’s attack. The Romans would have to face their former comrades, returned as zombies under Tarquin’s control. I remembered how hard it had been for Lavinia to shoot down Bobby with her crossbow in the tomb. I wondered how the legion’s morale would hold up once they faced the same ethical dilemma times fifty or sixty.
I was turning onto the Via Principalis, on my way to the mess hall, when a voice said, “Pssst.”
Lurking in the alley between Bombilo’s café and the chariot repair shop were Lavinia and Don. The faun was wearing an honest-to-gods trench coat over his tie-dyed T-shirt, as if that made him look inconspicuous. Lavinia wore a black cap over her pink hair.
“C’mere!” she hissed.
“But dinner—”
“We need you.”
“Is this a mugging?”
She marched over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me into the shadows.
“Don’t worry, dude,” Don told me. “It’s not a mugging! But, like, if you do have any spare change—”
“Shut up, Don,” said Lavinia.
“I’ll shut up,” Don agreed.
“Lester,” Lavinia said, “you need to come with us.”
“Lavinia, I’m tired. I’m hungry. And I have no spare change. Can’t it please wait—?”
“No. Because tomorrow we might all die, and this is important. We’re sneaking out.”
“Sneaking out?”
“Yeah,” Don said. “It’s when you’re sneaking. And you go out.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“You’ll see.” Lavinia’s tone was ominous, as if she couldn’t explain what my coffin looked like. I had to admire it with my own eyes.
“What if we get caught?”
“Oh!” Don perked up. “I know this one! For a first offense, it’s latrine duty for a month. But, see, if we all die tomorrow, it won’t matter!”
With that happy news, Lavinia and Don grabbed my hands a
nd dragged me farther into the darkness.
I sing of dead plants
And heroic shrubberies
Inspiring stuff
SNEAKING OUT OF A Roman military camp should not have been so easy.
Once we were safely through a hole in the fence, down a trench, through a tunnel, past the pickets, and out of sight of the camp’s sentry towers, Don was happy to explain how he’d arranged it all. “Dude, the place is designed to keep out armies. It’s not meant to keep in individual legionnaires, or keep out, you know, the occasional well-meaning faun who’s just looking for a hot meal. If you know the patrol schedule and are willing to keep changing up your entry points, it’s easy.”
“That seems remarkably industrious for a faun,” I noted.
Don grinned. “Hey, man. Slacking is hard work.”
“We’ve got a long walk,” Lavinia said. “Best keep moving.”
I tried not to groan. Another nighttime hike with Lavinia had not been on my evening’s agenda. But I had to admit I was curious. What had she and Don been arguing about before? Why had she wanted to talk to me earlier? And where were we going? With her stormy eyes and the black cap over her hair, Lavinia looked troubled and determined, less like a gawky giraffe, more like a tense gazelle. I’d seen her father, Sergei Asimov, perform once with the Moscow Ballet. He’d had that exact expression on his face before launching into a grand jeté.
I wanted to ask Lavinia what was going on, but her posture made it clear she was not in the mood for conversation. Not yet, anyway. We hiked in silence out of the valley and down into the streets of Berkeley.
It must have been about midnight by the time we got to People’s Park.
I had not been there since 1969, when I’d stopped by to experience some groovy hippie music and flower power and instead found myself in the middle of a riot. The police officers’ tear gas, shotguns, and batons had definitely not been groovy. It had taken all my godly restraint not to reveal my divine form and blast everyone within a six-mile radius to cinders.
Now, decades later, the scruffy park looked like it was still suffering from the aftermath. The worn brown lawn was strewn with piles of discarded clothing and cardboard signs bearing hand-painted slogans like GREEN SPACE NOT DORM SPACE and SAVE OUR PARK. Several tree stumps held potted plants and beaded necklaces, like shrines to the fallen. Trash cans overflowed. Homeless people slept on benches or fussed over shopping carts full of their worldly belongings.
At the far end of the square, occupying a raised plywood stage, was the largest sit-in of dryads and fauns I’d ever seen. It made total sense to me that fauns would inhabit People’s Park. They could laze around, panhandle, eat leftover food out of the garbage bins, and no one would bat an eye. The dryads were more of a surprise. At least two dozen of them were present. Some, I guessed, were the spirits of local eucalyptus and redwood trees, but most, given their sickly appearances, must have been dryads of the park’s long-suffering shrubs, grasses, and weeds. (Not that I am judging weed dryads. I’ve known some very fine crabgrasses.)
The fauns and dryads sat in a wide circle as if preparing for a sing-along around an invisible campfire. I got the feeling they were waiting for us—for me—to start the music.
I was already nervous enough. Then I spotted a familiar face and nearly jumped out of my zombie-infected skin. “Peaches?”
Meg’s demon-baby karpos bared his fangs and responded, “Peaches!”
His tree-branch wings had lost a few leaves. His curly green hair was dead brown at the tips, and his lamplike eyes didn’t shine as brightly as I remembered. He must’ve undergone quite an ordeal tracking us to Northern California, but his growl was still intimidating enough to make me fear for my bladder control.
“Where have you been?” I demanded.
“Peaches!”
I felt foolish for asking. Of course he had been peaches, probably because peaches, peaches, and peaches. “Does Meg know you’re here? How did you—?”
Lavinia gripped my shoulder. “Hey, Apollo. Time is short. Peaches filled us in on what he saw in Southern California, but he arrived there too late to help. He busted his wings to get up here as fast as he could. He wants you to tell the group firsthand what happened in SoCal.”
I scanned the faces in the crowd. The nature spirits looked scared, apprehensive, and angry—but mostly tired of being angry. I’d seen that look a lot among dryads in these latter days of human civilization. There was only so much pollution your average plant can breathe, drink, and get tangled in her branches before starting to lose all hope.
Now Lavinia wanted me to break their spirits completely by relating what had happened to their brethren in Los Angeles, and what fiery destruction was coming their way tomorrow. In other words, she wanted to get me killed by a mob of angry shrubs.
I gulped. “Um…”
“Here. This might help.” Lavinia slung her backpack off her shoulder. I hadn’t paid much attention to how bulky it looked, since she was always tromping around with lots of gear. When she opened it, the last thing I expected her to pull out was my ukulele—newly polished and restrung.
“How…?” I asked, as she placed it in my hands.
“I stole it from your room,” she said, as if this was obviously what friends did for each other. “You were asleep forever. I took it to a buddy of mine who repairs instruments—Marilyn, daughter of Euterpe. You know, the Muse of Music.”
“I—I know Euterpe. Of course. Her specialty is flutes, not ukuleles. But the action on this fret board is perfect now. Marilyn must be…I’m so…” I realized I was rambling. “Thank you.”
Lavinia fixed me with her stare, silently commanding me to make her effort worthwhile. She stepped back and joined the circle of nature spirits.
I strummed. Lavinia was right. The instrument helped. Not to hide behind—as I’d discovered, one cannot hide behind a ukulele. But it lent confidence to my voice. After a few mournful minor chords, I began to sing “The Fall of Jason Grace,” as I had when we first arrived at Camp Jupiter. The song quickly morphed, however. Like all good performers, I adapted the material to my audience.
I sang of the wildfires and droughts that had scorched Southern California. I sang of the brave cacti and satyrs from the Cistern in Palm Springs, who had struggled valiantly to find the source of the destruction. I sang of the dryads Agave and Money Maker, both gravely injured in the Burning Maze, and how Money Maker had died in the arms of Aloe Vera. I added some hopeful stanzas about Meg and the rebirth of the warrior dryad Meliai—how we’d destroyed the Burning Maze and given SoCal’s environment at least a fighting chance to heal. But I couldn’t hide the dangers that faced us. I described what I had seen in my dreams: the yachts approaching with their fiery mortars, the hellish devastation they would rain upon the entire Bay Area.
After strumming my final chord, I looked up. Green tears glistened in the dryads’ eyes. Fauns wept openly.
Peaches turned to the crowd and growled, “Peaches!”
This time, I was fairly sure I understood his meaning: See? I told you so!
Don sniffled, wiping his eyes with what looked like a used burrito wrapper. “It’s true, then. It’s happening. Faunus protect us…”
Lavinia dabbed away her own tears. “Thanks, Apollo.”
As if I’d done her a favor. Why, then, did I feel like I’d just kicked each and every one of these nature spirits right in the taproots? I’d spent a lot of time worrying about the fate of New Rome and Camp Jupiter, the Oracles, my friends, and myself. But these hackberries and crabgrasses deserved to live just as much. They, too, were facing death. They were terrified. If the emperors launched their weapons, they stood no chance. The homeless mortals with their shopping carts in People’s Park would also burn, right along with the legionnaires. Their lives were worth no less.
The mortals might not understand the disaster. They’d attribute it to runaway wildfires or whatever other causes their brains could comprehend. But I would know the tru
th. If this vast, weird, beautiful expanse of the California coast burned, it would be because I had failed to stop my enemies.
“Okay, guys,” Lavinia continued, after taking a moment to compose herself. “You heard him. The emperors will be here by tomorrow evening.”
“But that gives us no time,” said a redwood dryad. “If they do to the Bay Area what they did to LA…”
I could feel the fear ripple through the crowd like a cold wind.
“The legion will fight them, though, right?” a faun asked nervously. “I mean, they might win.”
“C’mon, Reginald,” a dryad chided. “You want to depend on mortals to protect us? When has that ever worked out?”
The others muttered assent.
“To be fair,” Lavinia cut in, “Frank and Reyna are trying. They’re sending a small team of commandos out to intercept the ships. Michael Kahale, and few other hand-picked demigods. But I’m not optimistic.”
“I hadn’t heard anything about that,” I said. “How did you find out?”
She raised her pink eyebrows like, Please. “And of course Lester here will try to summon godly help with some supersecret ritual, but…”
She didn’t need to say the rest. She wasn’t optimistic about that, either.
“So what will you do?” I asked. “What can you do?”
I didn’t mean to sound critical. I just couldn’t imagine any options.
The fauns’ panicky expressions seemed to hint at their game plan: get bus tickets to Portland, Oregon, immediately. But that wouldn’t help the dryads. They were literally rooted to their native soil. Perhaps they could go into deep hibernation, the way the dryads in the south had. But would that be enough to enable them to weather a firestorm? I’d heard stories about certain species of plants that germinated and thrived after devastating fires swept across the landscape, but I doubted most had that ability.
