Chapter Eight: I Make a Splash at the Park.
[ A few thousand years ago, Athena and Poseidon competed to be the patron god of Athens. Before he chose, the city’s king asked each of them to give Athens. My dad created a spring, which was a bummer gift for the human population of Athens because it was all salt water. Athena gave the city an olive tree, which was ridiculously useful. I think Annabeth’s kind of smug about that.
But even if the people of ancient Athens aren’t big on saltwater, I am, and always have been.
I knelt down in a corner of the park where the snow as light and there wasn’t much by way of plant life, and pulled out one of the pearl earrings I’d been given as part of the Doe family Christmas drive. We hadn’t used them, so I’d held on to the set, and now I knew exactly how I wanted to use them.
Things that had been part of the sea once always belonged to the sea, whether or not we were trapped in a horror town. It was true for seashells and hunks of driftwood and seaweed. It was true for pearls. It was true for me. I placed the pearl on the ground and clenched my fists.
“Water.”
There was a tugging sensation in my gut, and a waterspout exploded at my feet, shooting salt water twenty feet in the air. I thought of my fight with the Titan Hyperion and directed the water to swirl in circles around me - but this time, I also pushed it down, into the ground, shoving the hard winter dirt up and to the side. I sank lower and lower, at the bottom of a broad whirlpool that scooped out a crater in the ground, packing the earth into firm retaining walls at the bottom.
Enough, I thought
The water rushing around me slowed; dirt and debris settling around me. As it cleared, I could see, from the center of things, the water was maybe ten feet at its deepest, and maybe as big as a small pond.
Something small and shimmering drifted up toward me - the pearl. As I watched, it dissolved in a rush of tiny bubbles. In a matter of seconds, there was only a tiny speck of coarse sand floating before my eyes. It was the bit of grit the pearl had been, long before anyone thought of pulling it out of the ocean. Thanks, I mouthed, and it settled to the bottom with the rest of the silt.
As for me, I relaxed as the tug in my gut disappeared, and let the salt water buoy me to the surface. ]
But even if the people of ancient Athens aren’t big on saltwater, I am, and always have been.
I knelt down in a corner of the park where the snow as light and there wasn’t much by way of plant life, and pulled out one of the pearl earrings I’d been given as part of the Doe family Christmas drive. We hadn’t used them, so I’d held on to the set, and now I knew exactly how I wanted to use them.
Things that had been part of the sea once always belonged to the sea, whether or not we were trapped in a horror town. It was true for seashells and hunks of driftwood and seaweed. It was true for pearls. It was true for me. I placed the pearl on the ground and clenched my fists.
“Water.”
There was a tugging sensation in my gut, and a waterspout exploded at my feet, shooting salt water twenty feet in the air. I thought of my fight with the Titan Hyperion and directed the water to swirl in circles around me - but this time, I also pushed it down, into the ground, shoving the hard winter dirt up and to the side. I sank lower and lower, at the bottom of a broad whirlpool that scooped out a crater in the ground, packing the earth into firm retaining walls at the bottom.
Enough, I thought
The water rushing around me slowed; dirt and debris settling around me. As it cleared, I could see, from the center of things, the water was maybe ten feet at its deepest, and maybe as big as a small pond.
Something small and shimmering drifted up toward me - the pearl. As I watched, it dissolved in a rush of tiny bubbles. In a matter of seconds, there was only a tiny speck of coarse sand floating before my eyes. It was the bit of grit the pearl had been, long before anyone thought of pulling it out of the ocean. Thanks, I mouthed, and it settled to the bottom with the rest of the silt.
As for me, I relaxed as the tug in my gut disappeared, and let the salt water buoy me to the surface. ]