by Rick Riordan
Kudos to the Imperial Guard for having stupid amounts of courage. Despite my show of force, Gary charged me. With one hand, I snapped his spear. With the other, I punched a fist straight through his shield and hit his chest with enough might to fell a rhinoceros.
He collapsed in a heap.
I faced Nero. I could already feel my strength ebbing. My muscles were returning to their pathetic mortal flabbiness. I just hoped I’d have enough time to rip off Nero’s head and stuff it down his mauve suit.
The emperor snarled. “You’re a fool, Apollo. You always focus on the wrong thing.” He glanced at his Rolex. “My wrecking crew will be here any minute. Once Camp Half-Blood is destroyed, I’ll make it my new front lawn! Meanwhile, you’ll be here…putting out fires.”
From his vest pocket, he produced a silver cigarette lighter. Typical of Nero to keep several forms of fire-making close at hand. I looked at the glistening streaks of oil he had splashed on the ground….Greek fire, of course.
“Don’t,” I said.
Nero grinned. “Good-bye, Apollo. Only eleven more Olympians to go.”
He dropped the lighter.
I did not have the pleasure of tearing Nero’s head off.
Could I have stopped him from fleeing? Possibly. But the flames were roaring between us, burning grass and bones, tree roots, and the earth itself. The blaze was too strong to stamp out, if Greek fire even could be stamped out, and it was rolling hungrily toward the six bound hostages.
I let Nero go. Somehow he hauled Gary to his feet and lugged the punch-drunk Germanus toward the ants’ nest. Meanwhile, I ran to the stakes.
The closest was Austin’s. I wrapped my arms around the base and pulled, completely disregarding proper heavy-lifting techniques. My muscles strained. My eyes swam with the effort. I managed to raise the stake enough to topple it backward. Austin stirred and groaned.
I dragged him, cocoon and all, to the other side of the clearing, as far from the fire as possible. I would have brought him into the Grove of Dodona, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be doing him any favors by putting him in a dead-end clearing full of insane voices, in the direct path of approaching flames.
I ran back to the stakes. I repeated the process—uprooting Kayla, then Paulie the geyser god, then the others. By the time I pulled Miranda Gardiner to safety, the fire was a raging red tidal wave, only inches from the gates of the grove.
My divine strength was gone. Meg and Peaches were nowhere to be seen. I had bought a few minutes for the hostages, but the fire would eventually consume us all. I fell to my knees and sobbed.
“Help.” I scanned the dark trees, tangled and foreboding. I did not expect any help. I was not even used to asking for help. I was Apollo. Mortals called to me! (Yes, occasionally I might have ordered demigods to run trivial errands for me, like starting wars or retrieving magic items from monsters’ lairs, but those requests didn’t count.)
“I can’t do this alone.” I imagined Daphne’s face floating beneath the trunk of one tree, then another. Soon the woods would burn. I couldn’t save them any more than I could save Meg or the lost demigods or myself. “I’m so sorry. Please…forgive me.”
My head must have been spinning from smoke inhalation. I began to hallucinate. The shimmering forms of dryads emerged from their trees—a legion of Daphnes in green gossamer dresses. Their expressions were melancholy, as if they knew they were going to their deaths, yet they circled the fire. They raised their arms, and the earth erupted at their feet. A torrent of mud churned over the flames. The dryads drew the fire’s heat into their bodies. Their skin charred black. Their faces hardened and cracked.
As soon as the last flames were snuffed out, the dryads crumbled to ash. I wished I could crumble with them. I wanted to cry, but the fire had seared all the moisture from my tear ducts. I had not asked for so many sacrifices. I had not expected it! I felt hollow, guilty, and ashamed.
Then it occurred to me how many times I had asked for sacrifices, how many heroes I had sent to their deaths. Had they been any less noble and courageous than these dryads? Yet I had felt no remorse when I sent them off on deadly tasks. I had used them and discarded them, laid waste to their lives to build my own glory. I was no less of a monster than Nero.
Wind blew through the clearing—an unseasonably warm gust that swirled up the ashes and carried them through the forest canopy into the sky. Only after the breeze calmed did I realize it must have been the West Wind, my old rival, offering me consolation. He had swept up the remains and taken them off to their next beautiful reincarnation. After all these centuries, Zephyros had accepted my apology.
I discovered I had some tears left after all.
Behind me, someone groaned. “Where am I?”
Austin was awake.
I crawled to his side, now weeping with relief, and kissed his face. “My beautiful son!”
He blinked at me in confusion. His cornrows were sprinkled with ashes like frost on a field. I suppose it took a moment for him to process why he was being fawned over by a grungy, half-deranged boy with acne.
“Ah, right…Apollo.” He tried to move. “What the—? Why am I wrapped in smelly bandages? Could you free me, maybe?”
I laughed hysterically, which I doubt helped Austin’s peace of mind. I clawed at his bindings but made no progress. Then I remembered Gary’s snapped spear. I retrieved the point and spent several minutes sawing Austin free.
Once pulled from the stake, he stumbled around, trying to shake the circulation back into his limbs. He took in the scene—the smoldering forest, the other prisoners. The Grove of Dodona had stopped its wild chorus of screaming. (When had that happened?) A radiant amber light now glowed from the gateway.
“What’s going on?” Austin asked. “Also, where is my saxophone?”
Sensible questions. I wished I had sensible answers. All I knew was that Meg McCaffrey was still wandering in the grove, and I did not like the fact that the trees had gone silent.
I stared at my weak mortal arms. I wondered why I’d experienced a sudden surge of divine strength when facing the Germani. Had my emotions triggered it? Was it the first sign of my godly vigor returning for good? Or perhaps Zeus was just messing with me again—giving me a taste of my old power before yanking it away once more. Remember this, kid? WELL, YOU CAN’T HAVE IT!
I wished I could summon that strength again, but I would have to make do.
I handed Austin the broken spear. “Free the others. I’ll be back.”
Austin stared at me incredulously. “You’re going in there? Is it safe?”
“I doubt it,” I said.
Then I ran toward the Oracle.
Parting is sorrow
Nothing about it is sweet
Don’t step on my face
THE TREES WERE using their inside voices.
As I stepped through the gateway, I realized they were still talking in conversational tones, babbling nonsensically like sleepwalkers at a cocktail party.
I scanned the grove. No sign of Meg. I called her name. The trees responded by raising their voices, driving me cross-eyed with dizziness.
I steadied myself on the nearest oak.
“Watch it, man,” the tree said.
I lurched forward, the trees trading bits of verse as if playing a game of rhymes:
Caves of blue.
Strike the hue.
Westward, burning.
Pages turning.
Indiana.
Ripe banana.
Happiness approaches.
Serpents and roaches.
None of it made sense, but each line carried the weight of prophecy. I felt as if dozens of important statements, each vital to my survival, were being blended together, loaded in a shotgun, and fired at my face.
(Oh, that’s a rather good image. I’ll have to use it in a haiku.)
“Meg!” I called again.
Still no reply. The grove did not seem so large. How could she not hear me? How could I not see h
er?
I slogged along, humming a perfect A 440 hertz tone to keep myself focused. When I reached the second ring of trees, the oaks became more conversational.
“Hey, buddy, got a quarter?” one asked.
Another tried to tell me a joke about a penguin and a nun walking into a Shake Shack.
A third oak was giving its neighbor an infomercial sales pitch about a food processor. “And you won’t believe what it does with pasta!”
“Wow!” said the other tree. “It makes pasta, too?”
“Fresh linguine in minutes!” the sales oak enthused.
I did not understand why an oak tree would want linguine, but I kept moving. I was afraid that if I listened too long, I would order the food processor for three easy installments of $39.99, and my sanity would be lost forever.
Finally, I reached the center of the grove. On the far side of the largest oak tree, Meg stood with her back to the trunk, her eyes closed tight. The wind chimes were still in her hand, but they hung forgotten at her side. The brass cylinders clanked, muted against her dress.
At her feet, Peaches rocked back and forth, giggling. “Apples? Peaches! Mangoes? Peaches!”
“Meg.” I touched her shoulder.
She flinched. She focused on me as if I were a clever optical illusion. Her eyes simmered with fear. “It’s too much,” she said. “Too much.”
The voices had her in their grip. It was bad enough for me to endure—like a hundred radio stations playing at once, forcibly splitting my brain into different channels. But I was used to prophecies. Meg, on the other hand, was a daughter of Demeter. The trees liked her. They were all trying to share with her, to get her attention at the same time. Soon they would permanently fracture her mind.
“The wind chimes,” I said. “Hang them in the tree!”
I pointed to the lowest branch, well above our heads. Alone, neither of us could reach it, but if I gave Meg a boost…
Meg backed away, shaking her head. The voices of Dodona were so chaotic I wasn’t sure she had heard me. If she had, she either didn’t understand or didn’t trust me.
I had to tamp down my feelings of betrayal. Meg was Nero’s stepdaughter. She had been sent to lure me here, and our whole friendship was a lie. She had no right to mistrust me.
But I could not stay bitter. If I blamed her for the way Nero had twisted her emotions, I was no better than the Beast. Also, just because she had lied about being my friend did not mean I wasn’t hers. She was in danger. I was not going to leave her to the madness of the grove’s penguin jokes.
I crouched and laced my fingers to make a foothold. “Please.”
To my left, Peaches rolled onto his back and wailed, “Linguine? Peaches!”
Meg grimaced. I could see from her eyes that she was deciding to cooperate with me—not because she trusted me, but because Peaches was suffering.
Just when I thought my feelings could not be hurt any worse. It was one thing to be betrayed. It was another thing to be considered less important than a diapered fruit spirit.
Nevertheless, I remained steady as Meg placed her left foot in my hands. With all my remaining strength, I hoisted her up. She stepped onto my shoulders, then planted one red sneaker on top of my head. I made a mental note to put a safety label on my scalp: WARNING, TOP STEP IS NOT FOR STANDING.
With my back against the oak, I could feel the voices of the grove coursing up its trunk and drumming through its bark. The central tree seemed to be one giant antenna for crazy talk.
My knees were about to buckle. Meg’s treads were grinding into my forehead. The A 440 I had been humming rapidly deflated to a G sharp.
Finally, Meg tied the wind chimes to the branch. She jumped down as my legs collapsed, and we both ended up sprawled in the dirt.
The brass chimes swayed and clanged, picking notes out of the wind and making chords from the dissonance.
The grove hushed, as if the trees were listening and thinking, Oooh, pretty.
Then the ground trembled. The central oak shook with such energy, it rained acorns.
Meg got to her feet. She approached the tree and touched its trunk.
“Speak,” she commanded.
A single voice boomed forth from the wind chimes, like a cheerleader screaming through a megaphone:
There once was a god named Apollo
Who plunged in a cave blue and hollow
Upon a three-seater
The bronze fire-eater
Was forced death and madness to swallow
The wind chimes stilled. The grove settled into tranquility, as if satisfied with the death sentence it had given me.
Oh, the horror!
A sonnet I could have handled. A quatrain would have been cause for celebration. But only the deadliest prophecies are couched in the form of a limerick.
I stared at the wind chimes, hoping they would speak again and correct themselves. Oops, our mistake! That prophecy was for a different Apollo!
But my luck was not that good. I had been handed an edict worse than a thousand advertisements for pasta makers.
Peaches rose. He shook his head and hissed at the oak tree, which expressed my own sentiments perfectly. He hugged Meg’s calf as if she were the only thing keeping him from falling off the world. The scene was almost sweet, except for the karpos’s fangs and glowing eyes.
Meg regarded me warily. The lenses of her glasses were spiderwebbed with cracks.
“That prophecy,” she said. “Did you understand it?”
I swallowed a mouthful of soot. “Perhaps. Some of it. We’ll need to talk to Rachel—”
“There’s no more we.” Meg’s tone was as acrid as the volcanic gas of Delphi. “Do what you need to do. That’s my final order.”
This hit me like a spear shaft to the chin, despite the fact that she had lied to me and betrayed me.
“Meg, you can’t.” I couldn’t keep the shakiness out of my voice. “You claimed my service. Until my trials are over—”
“I release you.”
“No!” I could not stand the idea of being abandoned. Not again. Not by this ragamuffin Dumpster queen whom I’d learned to care about so much. “You can’t possibly believe in Nero now. You heard him explain his plans. He means to level this entire island! You saw what he tried to do to his hostages.”
“He—he wouldn’t have let them burn. He promised. He held back. You saw it. That wasn’t the Beast.”
My rib cage felt like an over-tightened harp. “Meg…Nero is the Beast. He killed your father.”
“No! Nero is my stepfather. My dad…my dad unleashed the Beast. He made it angry.”
“Meg—”
“Stop!” She covered her ears. “You don’t know him. Nero is good to me. I can talk to him. I can make it okay.”
Her denial was so complete, so irrational, I realized there was no way I could argue with her. She reminded me painfully of myself when I fell to earth—how I had refused to accept my new reality. Without Meg’s help, I would’ve gotten myself killed. Now our roles were reversed.
I edged toward her, but Peaches’s snarl stopped me in my tracks.
Meg backed away. “We’re done.”
“We can’t be,” I said. “We’re bound, whether you like it or not.”
It occurred to me that she’d said the exact same thing to me only a few days before.
She gave me one last look through her cracked lenses. I would have given anything for her to blow a raspberry. I wanted to walk the streets of Manhattan with her doing cartwheels in the intersections. I missed hobbling with her through the Labyrinth, our legs tied together. I would’ve settled for a good garbage fight in an alley. Instead, she turned and fled, with Peaches at her heels. It seemed to me that they dissolved into the trees, just the way Daphne had done long ago.
Above my head, a breeze made the wind chimes jingle. This time, no voices came from the trees. I didn’t know how long Dodona would remain silent, but I didn’t want to be here if the oaks decided to
start telling jokes again.
I turned and saw something strange at my feet: an arrow with an oak shaft and green fletching.
There shouldn’t have been an arrow. I hadn’t brought any into the grove. But in my dazed state, I didn’t question this. I did what any archer would do: I retrieved it, and returned it to my quiver.
Uber’s got nothing
Lyft is weak. And taxis? Nah
My ride is da mom
AUSTIN HAD FREED THE OTHER PRISONERS.
They looked like they had been dipped in a vat of glue and cotton swabs, but otherwise they seemed remarkably undamaged. Ellis Wakefield staggered around with his fists clenched, looking for something to punch. Cecil Markowitz, son of Hermes, sat on the ground trying to clean his sneakers with a deer’s thighbone. Austin—resourceful boy!—had produced a canteen of water and was washing the Greek fire off of Kayla’s face. Miranda Gardiner, the head counselor of Demeter, knelt by the place where the dryads had sacrificed themselves. She wept silently.
Paulie the palikos floated toward me. Like his partner, Pete, his lower half was all steam. From the waist up he looked like a slimmer, more abused version of his geyser buddy. His mud skin was cracked like a parched riverbed. His face was withered, as if every bit of moisture had been squeezed out of him. Looking at the damage Nero had done to him, I added a few more items to a mental list I was preparing: Ways to Torture an Emperor in the Fields of Punishment.
“You saved me,” Paulie said with amazement. “Bring it in!”
He threw his arms around me. His power was so diminished that his body heat did not kill me, but it did open up my sinuses quite well.
“You should get home,” I said. “Pete is worried, and you need to regain your strength.”
“Ah, man…” Paulie wiped a steaming tear from his face. “Yeah, I’m gone. But anything you ever need—a free steam cleaning, some PR work, a mud scrub, you name it.”
