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FIC: Daughter of Wisdom, chapter 3
Title: Daughter of Wisdom
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Grover Underwood, Chiron, various others, Gen
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: What Annabeth Chase wants most is to undertake a quest, and when that chance comes, she’s taking it-even if that means teaming up with the son of her mother’s biggest rival. She thinks she’s prepared for everything that could happen, but right from the start, nothing goes to plan. And everything she thinks she knows about the quest, her life, and her family, may just be turned on its head. An alternate PoV retelling of The Lightning Thief.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: I Attempt Some Detective Work
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Luke Castellan, Chiron, multiple others
Word Count: 4,553
Chapter Summary: Chiron goes off on a mission and Annabeth tries to figure out what the problem is on Olympus.
Notes: As far as I can glean, Athena and Poseidon’s chariot-building truce isn’t actually in the Iliad. I couldn’t find any other mythological reference to that truce, though, so I figured why not attribute it to a war where they were reportedly supporting the same team? If anyone knows where it actually does comes from, let me know!
Back to Fic Content Page
A week after our field trip, I had one of my prophecy nightmares. I don’t mean a prophetic dream, although those are pretty common, too. This was a series of recurring nightmares centred around a prophecy I’d heard two years ago.
In my dream, I was standing on a precipice, facing a wide expanse of sky. Below me, the earth fell away so far down that I wasn’t sure if it was sea at the bottom or rocky ground. It was all cloaked in mist.
I’d been many places when I was wandering around the country with Luke and Thalia, before we got to camp, but I didn’t recognise this place. I wasn’t sure if it was even somewhere on earth.
'Where’s your hero, little half-blood?' The voice was low and gravelly, coming up from somewhere beneath the mist. It echoed tauntingly against the cliff: half-blood, half-blood, half-blood. I was sure it was making fun of me.
'Who are you?'
It laughed, at least I thought it was laughter. It sounded more like nails on a chalkboard.
'It begins,' it said, and whatever 'it' was, the voice was obviously pleased about it. 'It begins, and you will have no power to stop me. Your hero belongs to me, daughter of Athena.'
'I don’t know what you’re talking about. What hero?'
'You know which one. Look.'
The swirling white mist obscuring the bottom of the cliff turned a bright sea-green. A different voice, hoarse and raspy, began to recite:
’A half-blood of the eldest gods
Shall reach sixteen against all odds …’
It was the Great Prophecy, the one I’d heard when I’d snuck in to see the camp Oracle, intent on getting myself a quest. Instead, she’d delivered these lines. Chiron had told me that it had been foretold ages ago, and that the gods had feared it so much, the three eldest brothers had made a pact not to have any more children, in an attempt to thwart the prophecy.
Of course, my friend Thalia had been born since, so obviously Zeus had fallen off the wagon.
I didn’t know the middle two lines of the prophecy, so they never appeared in my dreams, but the last two I could recite by heart as they came up:
’A final choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze.’
Supposedly this half-blood, whoever he was, was destined to make a choice that would either uphold or destroy the gods … and then he would die. Not exactly a great deal. In some of my worse nightmares, I dreamt that I was the one who had to make the choice and die, though I knew it was impossible. Prophecies were often worded with multiple meanings that would only come clear once the events actually happened, but no matter how you interpreted it, Athena was not one of the eldest gods.
'We have already found him,' the voice from the depths said, with smug satisfaction. 'It has already begun. Sleep well for now, daughter of Athena … or not.'
Something pushed me from behind. I stumbled off the precipice and then I was falling, my arms flailing, screaming at the top of my lungs …
'Annabeth, wake up!'
I came to with a yell. Anita Hawthorne, one of my half-sisters, was shaking me. I shivered. The sheets on my bunk bed felt icy cold. Then I realised the air in the cabin was actually frosty. My breath came out in little white puffs.
'What’s going on?' I said.
'I don’t know,' Anita said. She had two quilts wrapped around her, but her teeth were still chattering. Around the cabin, my other half-siblings were awake (I guess I’d been screaming in my sleep) and looking just as cold. 'But it’s snowing, look.' She drew the curtains of our cabin window.
'Snowing' was an understatement. Plumes of white swirled madly in the air in an angry, icy whirlwind. Some of it hit the window with more force than I thought possible.
I was dumbfounded. We occasionally got snow at Camp Half-Blood, but nothing like a blizzard of this scale. Bad weather tended to get repelled by our magic boundaries, same as monsters.
'Someone up there must be really pissed off,' Arthur Doolin said nervously.
We stayed in our cabins all day, as trudging to the mess hall would be like hiking across Alaska. It was impossible to see beyond the furthest row of cabins. Cabin eleven did a roaring trade in snacks, at least until Clarisse and her siblings from cabin five threatened to bash their heads in if they didn’t share.
Fortunately, the blizzard didn’t last long, and one good thing that came of it was that it left the canoe lake frozen over for several days. That was actually fun-the Hephaestus kids forged skates for everyone and we chased each other all over the ice until it melted, to the relief of the naiads, who swarmed the Big House, shivering and distressed.
A few days later, we got a couple of scorching hot days (in the middle of winter!) and we languished at night in sweltering cabins. Nobody got much sleep, and a bunch of campers ended up in the infirmary with heatstroke. The Apollo kids had to beg the wind nymphs to flutter round our windows to give us some breeze.
The crazy stuff ended quickly after that. I think Mr D got tired of dealing with complaints from the nymphs. He probably wasn’t too fond of putting up with the weather either. We went back to a typical mild January, but if you looked out over the Sound, you could tell that mainland New York was still being bombarded by storms of crackling energy and searing heat spells. Some of it still trickled over, like the faint rumble of an earthquake and the sea storms that whipped the waters of the Long Island Sound into frenzied white horses. Trips to the beach were forbidden, not that any of us were particularly keen to go in the middle of winter. I wondered how Grover was dealing with all of it over on the mainland. I thought about sending him an Iris message, but we weren’t really supposed to contact the satyrs during their missions. If Grover was already hanging around with a half-blood, a rainbow carrying a face might be a bad shock for the poor kid.
Weird weather usually meant the gods are ticked off about something. When that happened, there’d be a good chance that they’d want help to sort something out. When Chiron got up to make an announcement before dinner, I thought they might finally have persuaded him to call for a quest.
But what he told us was that he was going away for several months.
This was a real shock. It wasn’t uncommon for Chiron to leave the camp from time to time; he usually took a week’s vacation around February, when he visited relatives down south (though he always came back from these looking ironically more worn out than before he’d left), but for him to stay away for so long …
He didn’t offer details on where he was going, and the mess hall burst into nervous speculation.
'Not to worry, kids, Mr D will have someone coming in to help out.'
Mr D gave Chiron a sour look, as though he were annoyed by the trouble this would make for him.
After dinner, when everyone was toasting marshmallows in the central hearth, I slipped over to the Big House and knocked on the door to Chiron’s apartment.
'Come in,' Chiron called.
The first time I’d been in Chiron’s sitting room, the only furniture had been a high coffee table and a bunch of cushions with string fringes. These were still there, but he’d added a couple of armchairs since and the cushions now resided on them. One armchair held a stack of long-sleeve dress shirts, so unlike the casual t-shirts Chiron usually wore. They were neatly folded, with their collars starched and ironed. A couple of tweed sweater vests lay on top of them.
'Ah, Annabeth,' Chiron said. He was packing a bunch of books into a saddlebag. I couldn’t read the titles easily, but they seemed to be in Latin. Some had pictures of the gods and goddesses on them. 'Have a seat. Do you want a drink?'
'No, thanks. Are you really going to be gone for months?'
'I’m afraid so.'
'Is it a quest? Does it have anything to do with the funny stuff on Olympus?'
'No, it isn’t. This is more of a … well, let’s call it a scouting mission. I can’t say any more than that. And as for Olympus, I hope it won’t be connected, but I have my misgivings about the whole matter. The gods can be … well, that’s neither here nor there.'
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t offer any more information.
'Are the gods fighting, Chiron?' I asked.
'What makes you say that?' He continued pulling books off his shelves and shoving them in his saddlebag.
'Well, the weather is all messed up. And what you said, when we got back from Olympus last week, about something happening there.'
Chiron hesitated, his fingers lingering over one volume. He seemed to be considering something. When he pulled the book out, he didn’t throw it in his bag, but instead held it out to me.
'I think this will be useful to you,' he said.
I took it. It was thin, with a hard cover that felt like tree bark. The title was in Greek, so I didn’t have any trouble reading it: The Iliad. On the cover was a picture of a broad-shouldered man emerging from the sea, watching a battle proceed under a cloud of thunder.
'Thank you,' I said, though he seemed to be avoiding answering my question. The book did remind me of something I wanted to ask him before he left, though. 'Chiron, will you still be able to issue a quest when you’re away?'
Chiron looked at me in surprise. 'My dear, surely you know that I don’t control the quests?'
'You don’t? But you wouldn’t give any out for the last two years-'
'I give my advice, that’s all. Personally, I was never a fan of having my campers go questing. You’re all so very young. It used to be, heroes were much older, they got to train for longer. We lose so many of you now to monsters as it is. But there is always that argument that it builds character …'
'When we were on Olympus, the gods wanted to know if any of us had completed a quest yet. They sort of told us we weren’t worth anything if we didn’t.'
'I’m not sure they realise how old you really are. When you’re immortal, it gets hard to differentiate the ages of humans. And you know, not every demigod undertakes a quest. There’s nothing wrong with living a long, happy life. It’s much safer, in fact.'
'But I want to have a quest!'
'We talked about this before, Annabeth.'
I ground my teeth in frustration. Two years ago, when the Oracle had given me the recycled Great Prophecy instead of a proper one for myself, Chiron had caught me in the middle of it, making me miss two of the lines. Worse still, he had decreed that if I was supposed to be involved in that prophecy, it was more important to keep me safe. Besides, he’d said, there were no pressing issues to be resolved on Olympus, and there probably wouldn’t be until the Great Prophecy came round to fulfilment. Which it wouldn’t, until the 'half-blood of the eldest gods' showed up.
Given that it had been over fifty years and the only known kid of the Big Three was now a tree, things weren’t looking promising.
(Personally, I thought the conclusion that 'a child of the eldest gods' must be sired by Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades might be a bit hasty. I’d read up lots on the Olympians since Chiron and I had first talked about the prophecy. There were six original Olympians after all, and depending on how you looked at it, the oldest of them was also the youngest. Demeter had a bunch of children, too. Unfortunately, none of the cabin four residents seemed remotely interested in taking up a quest. I’d scouted them out and they’d just looked at me like I was crazy. They were more interested in tending the strawberry fields and petitioning to start a grain field, too.)
'Chiron, it’s already been two years,' I pleaded. 'I’m ready. I can handle a quest.'
'If you really want to be out in the world, you have other options, you know. I know I can’t technically forbid you to leave camp during term time. If you want to go home to your father, you certainly may.'
I scowled. Chiron knew how I felt about living with my dad. Besides, he was missing the point. A quest wasn’t just about monsters. Sure, defeating them got you plenty of street cred around camp, but being a hero wasn’t just slaying monsters-that just came with the territory. If you wanted to succeed, you needed wits. All the best heroes were smart, like Perseus and Atalanta. They didn’t always charge in, swords blazing. Quest challenges didn’t just feature the usual, run-of-the-mill demigod-hunting beasts. They were ancient archetypes that you needed to understand. You had to recognise what you were facing, identify their weaknesses, attack with a strategy.
Perfect for a daughter of Athena, I thought. Not that I’d ever had a chance to prove it.
'I want you to promise me that you won’t run off rashly,' Chiron said. 'Be patient, Annabeth. You can wait a little longer. Your time will come.'
I sighed. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the speech; it seemed like all I did was wait. I wondered if Chiron would keep promising that my chance would arrive until I was twenty. But I promised. Chiron was more of a father to me than my actual dad. Whatever I felt about his annoying refusal to send me on a quest, I trusted him.
'Here,' Chiron said, handing me another book. This one was thicker, and in English, but it showed an assortment of the world’s greatest monuments on the cover. 'I imagine you’ll enjoy this. But don’t forget to read the other one, too.'
He was right. It would be worth slogging through the text just to learn all the facts about the monuments. My frustration with him melted away and I hugged him tightly around the waist. Chiron patted my head kindly.
'I’m going to miss you, Chiron,' I said.
'Don’t worry,' he said. 'It’ll be summer before you know it, and I’ll be back. Now run along. It’s almost curfew.'
I took the two books he’d given me and left him to finish packing.
OoOoO
Over the next few months, I made it my business to find out everything I could about what was going on in the outside world. I remembered my mother’s advice in my dream on Olympus: train hard, and let your head guide you. Unless I knew things, how would I be prepared? I devoured The Iliad almost as quickly as I did the book of monuments (I hoped Chiron wouldn’t mind me scribbling over the latter; I’d marked them all for easy reference: my favourites, the ones I’d seen before, and the ones I thought I had a reasonable chance of seeing in the future). The Iliad turned out to be fairly interesting. It was the story of the hero Achilles, and it morphed into a full out battle between the Greeks and the Trojans, egged on by the gods. My mom, on the side of the Greeks, went head to head with Ares early on. On her other ancient rivalry with Poseidon, the story didn’t say much, though I found it interesting that they fought on the same side and even co-operated at one point-under duress-to built a chariot together.
Several of the satyrs who had been out scouting returned with the half-bloods they’d found-the few who had attracted too much monster attention to wait until summer. I scrutinised each one eagerly, in case they were the prophesied hero I was waiting for. Naturally, they went first to the Hermes cabin, which wasn’t as crowded as it typically was during summer session. I hung around there so much, Luke finally pulled me aside after sparring practice and told me, gently, that I was breaking the rules.
'Look, I appreciate you looking out for the new kids,' he said, 'but they’re settling in okay. Until we know who their parent is, they’re cabin eleven-and you’re not.'
'It’s not-I’m not, really, well … it’s not that, exactly …' I was a bit embarrassed to admit to Luke, who was a senior counsellor and looked after everyone, that I wasn’t really coming around out of concern for the new kids' wellbeing.
Luke gave me a knowing look. 'Ah, I get it.' He winked. 'Which one is it, then? Probably not Maia, though hey, if that’s your taste, it’s totally cool. I suppose Malcolm is a bit young … though he’s only a year younger, isn’t he?'
'What-no! It’s not like that!' I blushed furiously when I realised what he was teasing me about. Luke only grinned wider, taking my response as more evidence. 'It’s, well …' I hesitated. I’d promised Chiron before that I wouldn’t tell anybody about the Great Prophecy, but I found that I couldn’t stand for Luke to think I liked someone else. 'It’s just that they might be the sign that I can get a quest.' I skirted around the prophecy, making it sound as though the Oracle had just told Chiron it was my destiny to wait for a special someone. It sounded a bit lame, like one of those princess-in-the-tower tales the Aphrodite girls always told when it was their turn for campfire stories, but it was the best I could do without breaking my promise outright. 'So I had to know if it was them, you know? I’ve got to get a quest.'
Luke rubbed his chin. 'Wow. Just like the Oracle not to be clear about who you’re waiting for, huh?'
'Yeah, it’s annoying.'
'Well, you know, quests aren’t really all they’re made out to be, anyway.'
'Just because you f-' I began hotly, but stopped quickly, wishing I could bite my tongue off. 'I mean, at least you’ve had the chance. That’s all I want. To know if I’m any good.'
Luke’s eyes were unfathomable. I cursed inwardly. Here we were, talking as we hadn’t done in ages, and I had to walk straight into the touchiest subject there was for him.
'I’m sorry,' I said in a small voice. 'I didn’t mean to remind you.'
'No, Annabeth, I am. It’s okay-I’m over it now. I’ve got more important things to focus on.' His elvish eyes crinkled in a smile and he patted my hand. My heart did a somersault. 'I know how important a quest is to you.'
We sat in silence for a little while longer, then he got up, picked up his sword, and headed off.
OoOoO
I finally decided that none of the new campers were prophecy material. The eleven-year-old, Malcolm Pace, got claimed soon enough, and he turned out to be my half-sibling. Guilty about shadowing him for my own ulterior motives, I helped him move into the Athena cabin. He seemed to think I was just being friendly all along. The other two remained, parentage undetermined, with cabin eleven. Keith Dyson was thirteen, and unlike Malcolm, he didn’t view my company quite as favourably. He tended to avoid me, giving me suspicious glances whenever I passed. He had stringy brown hair like Clarisse and hard, narrow eyes. I decided that he’d probably be an Ares kid if the war god ever got round to claiming him-not someone I would want to work with anyway. The girl, Maia Reyes, was fifteen, and probably would have survived for longer outside if the monsters in New York hadn’t suddenly been on red alert.
I found this out from Perry Barkwell, the satyr who had brought her in. He’d been surprised; apparently he’d scouted her school for several years without realising she was one of us.
'What do you mean they’re on red alert?' I asked.
Perry chewed nervously on the edge of a cardboard box. 'I really shouldn’t say …'
'My friend Grover’s out there. I’m worried about him. If the monsters are getting more active …'
'I’m sure he’s fine. Chiron’s with him, isn’t he?'
'He is?'
'Yeah, apparently he thinks he’s found someone really powerful.'
My eyes widened. Perry seemed to realise he’d said too much and clammed up. I couldn’t get any more out of him after that.
Life at camp went on. Mr D had found a short-term substitute for Chiron, but the stand-in activities director, Triptolemus, was pretty boring. His idea of a good activity was plowing the fields, and upon discovering that all we had was a strawberry crop, he proceeded to set us to sowing a wheat field. This delighted the Demeter cabin, who threw themselves happily into the task. The rest of us were a little less thrilled to be sent out into the fields to do boring, back-breaking work.
Every night, I read more of The Iliad. Malcolm noticed what I was doing and started to ask me about it. I read some of it to him, explaining the parts that were harder to understand, and adding some of the other myths I knew, like the ones Ariadne had told us on Olympus. That, of course, led to a discussion about the winter solstice field trip. Before I knew it, a whole crowd of kids-mostly younger, but some of the older ones, too-wanted to know more about the stuff I was telling Malcolm, and I found myself giving an impromptu lecture on Ancient Greece.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was something like what my father did for a living-he was a history professor at West Point-and he wasn’t exactly the role model I wanted to emulate.
May rolled around, and more satyrs started to trip back as their respective school terms let up. They all returned alone, some of them dejected by failures (every year, there were half-bloods who inevitably got killed), others reporting that the demigods they’d located hadn’t come into their scent yet and would likely last another year undetected. They all seemed uneasy about something they’d learned when they were out, though, something they refused to talk about with the campers. If we walked by when they were discussing it, they’d shut right up. The only thing I managed to confirm was that something was wrong on Olympus.
The only way I was going to get any real information out of them was if they couldn’t see me coming.
And then I realised I had the perfect weapon. It was time to put my birthday present to good use.
It was risky to sneak around in the Big House-the one time I’d tried, I’d gotten caught almost right away-but I planned it out carefully. I chose an afternoon when Triptolemus was overseeing was weeding of the furthest field and Mr D had set up a pinochle game with the elder satyrs. It would be even safer if Mr D was actually away, but I figured that my best chance of hearing anything about the gods would be to eavesdrop on the satyrs’ actual conversation with one.
First I made sure to let Triptolemus see me with the other campers. He still couldn’t remember our names, but he always ticked off our attendance right at the beginning of fieldwork. I then picked the furthest corner of the field and disappeared among the highest weeds, hunching over so they would obscure me, and put on the Yankees cap.
My body vanished. Slowly, so as not to rustle the crops too much and give away my own position, I inched back round to the edge of the fields. Once I was past Triptolemus, I sprinted for the Big House. Invisible, I slipped past the infirmary (it was unusually crowded, mostly because half the Hermes cabin was faking sick to get out of the fields) and sidled up near the door that opened out to the back porch. I knew I couldn’t get too close, because satyrs could sense emotions and I didn’t want them realising I was hanging about.
I heard the nervous bleating laugh of one of the satyrs. 'He’s really mad. I don’t want to know what will happen if he doesn’t get it back by the summer solstice.'
'Well, it definitely wasn’t at any of the schools we scouted,' another satyr said. 'And it’s not here, obviously. Whoever stole it hid it good.'
There was no sign of Mr D-he didn’t appear to have joined the satyrs at the card table yet, but that didn’t matter. The satyrs’ conversation was already informative enough.
'Do you really think it’s stolen?'
'Of course-would a god misplace something like that?'
'But you know, even if he figures out where it is, the rules won’t let him fetch it himself. He’d need a hero to do it for him.'
'A quest?'
'If it’s really one of the sons, though …'
I listened intently, definitely interested now. I hoped they might work back around to what exactly was stolen. This was exactly what I needed to know.
'A son of Zeus? He wouldn’t steal from his dad.'
'He could get it back, though.'
Loud plodding footsteps sounded down the hall, accompanied by the scraping of a wheel on the wooden farmhouse floor. I held my breath as Mr D advanced, followed by a man in a wheelchair.
'At least you’re back at last from that fool’s errand,' Mr D said irritably. 'I can finally get rid of Triptolemus’s idiotic wheat fields.'
I stifled a grin at the thought that Mr D was as irked by the wheat fields as we were, then the meaning of his words sank in. Completely forgetting I was invisible, I squealed, 'Chiron!'
'Furies of Hades!' Mr D cried. 'Who’s there?'
Mortified, I pulled off my invisibility cap. 'Sorry, sir.'
'Annabeth? What on Olympus are you doing?' Chiron said. He was dressed in one of the fancy shirts I’d seen on his armchair when he was packing. He rose out of the wheelchair, returning to his stallion half.
'Um, welcoming you back,' I said quickly.
Mr D gave me the stink-eye. 'Go get those lazy brats out of the infirmary. We’re closing the fields, so you can tell them there’s no need to pretend any more.'
'Pretend?' Chiron said.
I let Mr D fill him in. When a god gives you an order, you don’t wait around or disobey. I quickly ran down the hallway to give the others the good news.
Chapter 4
Author: shiiki
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Annabeth Chase, Percy Jackson, Luke Castellan, Grover Underwood, Chiron, various others, Gen
Fandom: Percy Jackson
Summary: What Annabeth Chase wants most is to undertake a quest, and when that chance comes, she’s taking it-even if that means teaming up with the son of her mother’s biggest rival. She thinks she’s prepared for everything that could happen, but right from the start, nothing goes to plan. And everything she thinks she knows about the quest, her life, and her family, may just be turned on its head. An alternate PoV retelling of The Lightning Thief.
In this chapter
Chapter Title: I Attempt Some Detective Work
Rating: PG
Characters: Annabeth Chase, Luke Castellan, Chiron, multiple others
Word Count: 4,553
Chapter Summary: Chiron goes off on a mission and Annabeth tries to figure out what the problem is on Olympus.
Notes: As far as I can glean, Athena and Poseidon’s chariot-building truce isn’t actually in the Iliad. I couldn’t find any other mythological reference to that truce, though, so I figured why not attribute it to a war where they were reportedly supporting the same team? If anyone knows where it actually does comes from, let me know!
Back to Fic Content Page
A week after our field trip, I had one of my prophecy nightmares. I don’t mean a prophetic dream, although those are pretty common, too. This was a series of recurring nightmares centred around a prophecy I’d heard two years ago.
In my dream, I was standing on a precipice, facing a wide expanse of sky. Below me, the earth fell away so far down that I wasn’t sure if it was sea at the bottom or rocky ground. It was all cloaked in mist.
I’d been many places when I was wandering around the country with Luke and Thalia, before we got to camp, but I didn’t recognise this place. I wasn’t sure if it was even somewhere on earth.
'Where’s your hero, little half-blood?' The voice was low and gravelly, coming up from somewhere beneath the mist. It echoed tauntingly against the cliff: half-blood, half-blood, half-blood. I was sure it was making fun of me.
'Who are you?'
It laughed, at least I thought it was laughter. It sounded more like nails on a chalkboard.
'It begins,' it said, and whatever 'it' was, the voice was obviously pleased about it. 'It begins, and you will have no power to stop me. Your hero belongs to me, daughter of Athena.'
'I don’t know what you’re talking about. What hero?'
'You know which one. Look.'
The swirling white mist obscuring the bottom of the cliff turned a bright sea-green. A different voice, hoarse and raspy, began to recite:
’A half-blood of the eldest gods
Shall reach sixteen against all odds …’
It was the Great Prophecy, the one I’d heard when I’d snuck in to see the camp Oracle, intent on getting myself a quest. Instead, she’d delivered these lines. Chiron had told me that it had been foretold ages ago, and that the gods had feared it so much, the three eldest brothers had made a pact not to have any more children, in an attempt to thwart the prophecy.
Of course, my friend Thalia had been born since, so obviously Zeus had fallen off the wagon.
I didn’t know the middle two lines of the prophecy, so they never appeared in my dreams, but the last two I could recite by heart as they came up:
’A final choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze.’
Supposedly this half-blood, whoever he was, was destined to make a choice that would either uphold or destroy the gods … and then he would die. Not exactly a great deal. In some of my worse nightmares, I dreamt that I was the one who had to make the choice and die, though I knew it was impossible. Prophecies were often worded with multiple meanings that would only come clear once the events actually happened, but no matter how you interpreted it, Athena was not one of the eldest gods.
'We have already found him,' the voice from the depths said, with smug satisfaction. 'It has already begun. Sleep well for now, daughter of Athena … or not.'
Something pushed me from behind. I stumbled off the precipice and then I was falling, my arms flailing, screaming at the top of my lungs …
'Annabeth, wake up!'
I came to with a yell. Anita Hawthorne, one of my half-sisters, was shaking me. I shivered. The sheets on my bunk bed felt icy cold. Then I realised the air in the cabin was actually frosty. My breath came out in little white puffs.
'What’s going on?' I said.
'I don’t know,' Anita said. She had two quilts wrapped around her, but her teeth were still chattering. Around the cabin, my other half-siblings were awake (I guess I’d been screaming in my sleep) and looking just as cold. 'But it’s snowing, look.' She drew the curtains of our cabin window.
'Snowing' was an understatement. Plumes of white swirled madly in the air in an angry, icy whirlwind. Some of it hit the window with more force than I thought possible.
I was dumbfounded. We occasionally got snow at Camp Half-Blood, but nothing like a blizzard of this scale. Bad weather tended to get repelled by our magic boundaries, same as monsters.
'Someone up there must be really pissed off,' Arthur Doolin said nervously.
We stayed in our cabins all day, as trudging to the mess hall would be like hiking across Alaska. It was impossible to see beyond the furthest row of cabins. Cabin eleven did a roaring trade in snacks, at least until Clarisse and her siblings from cabin five threatened to bash their heads in if they didn’t share.
Fortunately, the blizzard didn’t last long, and one good thing that came of it was that it left the canoe lake frozen over for several days. That was actually fun-the Hephaestus kids forged skates for everyone and we chased each other all over the ice until it melted, to the relief of the naiads, who swarmed the Big House, shivering and distressed.
A few days later, we got a couple of scorching hot days (in the middle of winter!) and we languished at night in sweltering cabins. Nobody got much sleep, and a bunch of campers ended up in the infirmary with heatstroke. The Apollo kids had to beg the wind nymphs to flutter round our windows to give us some breeze.
The crazy stuff ended quickly after that. I think Mr D got tired of dealing with complaints from the nymphs. He probably wasn’t too fond of putting up with the weather either. We went back to a typical mild January, but if you looked out over the Sound, you could tell that mainland New York was still being bombarded by storms of crackling energy and searing heat spells. Some of it still trickled over, like the faint rumble of an earthquake and the sea storms that whipped the waters of the Long Island Sound into frenzied white horses. Trips to the beach were forbidden, not that any of us were particularly keen to go in the middle of winter. I wondered how Grover was dealing with all of it over on the mainland. I thought about sending him an Iris message, but we weren’t really supposed to contact the satyrs during their missions. If Grover was already hanging around with a half-blood, a rainbow carrying a face might be a bad shock for the poor kid.
Weird weather usually meant the gods are ticked off about something. When that happened, there’d be a good chance that they’d want help to sort something out. When Chiron got up to make an announcement before dinner, I thought they might finally have persuaded him to call for a quest.
But what he told us was that he was going away for several months.
This was a real shock. It wasn’t uncommon for Chiron to leave the camp from time to time; he usually took a week’s vacation around February, when he visited relatives down south (though he always came back from these looking ironically more worn out than before he’d left), but for him to stay away for so long …
He didn’t offer details on where he was going, and the mess hall burst into nervous speculation.
'Not to worry, kids, Mr D will have someone coming in to help out.'
Mr D gave Chiron a sour look, as though he were annoyed by the trouble this would make for him.
After dinner, when everyone was toasting marshmallows in the central hearth, I slipped over to the Big House and knocked on the door to Chiron’s apartment.
'Come in,' Chiron called.
The first time I’d been in Chiron’s sitting room, the only furniture had been a high coffee table and a bunch of cushions with string fringes. These were still there, but he’d added a couple of armchairs since and the cushions now resided on them. One armchair held a stack of long-sleeve dress shirts, so unlike the casual t-shirts Chiron usually wore. They were neatly folded, with their collars starched and ironed. A couple of tweed sweater vests lay on top of them.
'Ah, Annabeth,' Chiron said. He was packing a bunch of books into a saddlebag. I couldn’t read the titles easily, but they seemed to be in Latin. Some had pictures of the gods and goddesses on them. 'Have a seat. Do you want a drink?'
'No, thanks. Are you really going to be gone for months?'
'I’m afraid so.'
'Is it a quest? Does it have anything to do with the funny stuff on Olympus?'
'No, it isn’t. This is more of a … well, let’s call it a scouting mission. I can’t say any more than that. And as for Olympus, I hope it won’t be connected, but I have my misgivings about the whole matter. The gods can be … well, that’s neither here nor there.'
I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t offer any more information.
'Are the gods fighting, Chiron?' I asked.
'What makes you say that?' He continued pulling books off his shelves and shoving them in his saddlebag.
'Well, the weather is all messed up. And what you said, when we got back from Olympus last week, about something happening there.'
Chiron hesitated, his fingers lingering over one volume. He seemed to be considering something. When he pulled the book out, he didn’t throw it in his bag, but instead held it out to me.
'I think this will be useful to you,' he said.
I took it. It was thin, with a hard cover that felt like tree bark. The title was in Greek, so I didn’t have any trouble reading it: The Iliad. On the cover was a picture of a broad-shouldered man emerging from the sea, watching a battle proceed under a cloud of thunder.
'Thank you,' I said, though he seemed to be avoiding answering my question. The book did remind me of something I wanted to ask him before he left, though. 'Chiron, will you still be able to issue a quest when you’re away?'
Chiron looked at me in surprise. 'My dear, surely you know that I don’t control the quests?'
'You don’t? But you wouldn’t give any out for the last two years-'
'I give my advice, that’s all. Personally, I was never a fan of having my campers go questing. You’re all so very young. It used to be, heroes were much older, they got to train for longer. We lose so many of you now to monsters as it is. But there is always that argument that it builds character …'
'When we were on Olympus, the gods wanted to know if any of us had completed a quest yet. They sort of told us we weren’t worth anything if we didn’t.'
'I’m not sure they realise how old you really are. When you’re immortal, it gets hard to differentiate the ages of humans. And you know, not every demigod undertakes a quest. There’s nothing wrong with living a long, happy life. It’s much safer, in fact.'
'But I want to have a quest!'
'We talked about this before, Annabeth.'
I ground my teeth in frustration. Two years ago, when the Oracle had given me the recycled Great Prophecy instead of a proper one for myself, Chiron had caught me in the middle of it, making me miss two of the lines. Worse still, he had decreed that if I was supposed to be involved in that prophecy, it was more important to keep me safe. Besides, he’d said, there were no pressing issues to be resolved on Olympus, and there probably wouldn’t be until the Great Prophecy came round to fulfilment. Which it wouldn’t, until the 'half-blood of the eldest gods' showed up.
Given that it had been over fifty years and the only known kid of the Big Three was now a tree, things weren’t looking promising.
(Personally, I thought the conclusion that 'a child of the eldest gods' must be sired by Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades might be a bit hasty. I’d read up lots on the Olympians since Chiron and I had first talked about the prophecy. There were six original Olympians after all, and depending on how you looked at it, the oldest of them was also the youngest. Demeter had a bunch of children, too. Unfortunately, none of the cabin four residents seemed remotely interested in taking up a quest. I’d scouted them out and they’d just looked at me like I was crazy. They were more interested in tending the strawberry fields and petitioning to start a grain field, too.)
'Chiron, it’s already been two years,' I pleaded. 'I’m ready. I can handle a quest.'
'If you really want to be out in the world, you have other options, you know. I know I can’t technically forbid you to leave camp during term time. If you want to go home to your father, you certainly may.'
I scowled. Chiron knew how I felt about living with my dad. Besides, he was missing the point. A quest wasn’t just about monsters. Sure, defeating them got you plenty of street cred around camp, but being a hero wasn’t just slaying monsters-that just came with the territory. If you wanted to succeed, you needed wits. All the best heroes were smart, like Perseus and Atalanta. They didn’t always charge in, swords blazing. Quest challenges didn’t just feature the usual, run-of-the-mill demigod-hunting beasts. They were ancient archetypes that you needed to understand. You had to recognise what you were facing, identify their weaknesses, attack with a strategy.
Perfect for a daughter of Athena, I thought. Not that I’d ever had a chance to prove it.
'I want you to promise me that you won’t run off rashly,' Chiron said. 'Be patient, Annabeth. You can wait a little longer. Your time will come.'
I sighed. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the speech; it seemed like all I did was wait. I wondered if Chiron would keep promising that my chance would arrive until I was twenty. But I promised. Chiron was more of a father to me than my actual dad. Whatever I felt about his annoying refusal to send me on a quest, I trusted him.
'Here,' Chiron said, handing me another book. This one was thicker, and in English, but it showed an assortment of the world’s greatest monuments on the cover. 'I imagine you’ll enjoy this. But don’t forget to read the other one, too.'
He was right. It would be worth slogging through the text just to learn all the facts about the monuments. My frustration with him melted away and I hugged him tightly around the waist. Chiron patted my head kindly.
'I’m going to miss you, Chiron,' I said.
'Don’t worry,' he said. 'It’ll be summer before you know it, and I’ll be back. Now run along. It’s almost curfew.'
I took the two books he’d given me and left him to finish packing.
OoOoO
Over the next few months, I made it my business to find out everything I could about what was going on in the outside world. I remembered my mother’s advice in my dream on Olympus: train hard, and let your head guide you. Unless I knew things, how would I be prepared? I devoured The Iliad almost as quickly as I did the book of monuments (I hoped Chiron wouldn’t mind me scribbling over the latter; I’d marked them all for easy reference: my favourites, the ones I’d seen before, and the ones I thought I had a reasonable chance of seeing in the future). The Iliad turned out to be fairly interesting. It was the story of the hero Achilles, and it morphed into a full out battle between the Greeks and the Trojans, egged on by the gods. My mom, on the side of the Greeks, went head to head with Ares early on. On her other ancient rivalry with Poseidon, the story didn’t say much, though I found it interesting that they fought on the same side and even co-operated at one point-under duress-to built a chariot together.
Several of the satyrs who had been out scouting returned with the half-bloods they’d found-the few who had attracted too much monster attention to wait until summer. I scrutinised each one eagerly, in case they were the prophesied hero I was waiting for. Naturally, they went first to the Hermes cabin, which wasn’t as crowded as it typically was during summer session. I hung around there so much, Luke finally pulled me aside after sparring practice and told me, gently, that I was breaking the rules.
'Look, I appreciate you looking out for the new kids,' he said, 'but they’re settling in okay. Until we know who their parent is, they’re cabin eleven-and you’re not.'
'It’s not-I’m not, really, well … it’s not that, exactly …' I was a bit embarrassed to admit to Luke, who was a senior counsellor and looked after everyone, that I wasn’t really coming around out of concern for the new kids' wellbeing.
Luke gave me a knowing look. 'Ah, I get it.' He winked. 'Which one is it, then? Probably not Maia, though hey, if that’s your taste, it’s totally cool. I suppose Malcolm is a bit young … though he’s only a year younger, isn’t he?'
'What-no! It’s not like that!' I blushed furiously when I realised what he was teasing me about. Luke only grinned wider, taking my response as more evidence. 'It’s, well …' I hesitated. I’d promised Chiron before that I wouldn’t tell anybody about the Great Prophecy, but I found that I couldn’t stand for Luke to think I liked someone else. 'It’s just that they might be the sign that I can get a quest.' I skirted around the prophecy, making it sound as though the Oracle had just told Chiron it was my destiny to wait for a special someone. It sounded a bit lame, like one of those princess-in-the-tower tales the Aphrodite girls always told when it was their turn for campfire stories, but it was the best I could do without breaking my promise outright. 'So I had to know if it was them, you know? I’ve got to get a quest.'
Luke rubbed his chin. 'Wow. Just like the Oracle not to be clear about who you’re waiting for, huh?'
'Yeah, it’s annoying.'
'Well, you know, quests aren’t really all they’re made out to be, anyway.'
'Just because you f-' I began hotly, but stopped quickly, wishing I could bite my tongue off. 'I mean, at least you’ve had the chance. That’s all I want. To know if I’m any good.'
Luke’s eyes were unfathomable. I cursed inwardly. Here we were, talking as we hadn’t done in ages, and I had to walk straight into the touchiest subject there was for him.
'I’m sorry,' I said in a small voice. 'I didn’t mean to remind you.'
'No, Annabeth, I am. It’s okay-I’m over it now. I’ve got more important things to focus on.' His elvish eyes crinkled in a smile and he patted my hand. My heart did a somersault. 'I know how important a quest is to you.'
We sat in silence for a little while longer, then he got up, picked up his sword, and headed off.
OoOoO
I finally decided that none of the new campers were prophecy material. The eleven-year-old, Malcolm Pace, got claimed soon enough, and he turned out to be my half-sibling. Guilty about shadowing him for my own ulterior motives, I helped him move into the Athena cabin. He seemed to think I was just being friendly all along. The other two remained, parentage undetermined, with cabin eleven. Keith Dyson was thirteen, and unlike Malcolm, he didn’t view my company quite as favourably. He tended to avoid me, giving me suspicious glances whenever I passed. He had stringy brown hair like Clarisse and hard, narrow eyes. I decided that he’d probably be an Ares kid if the war god ever got round to claiming him-not someone I would want to work with anyway. The girl, Maia Reyes, was fifteen, and probably would have survived for longer outside if the monsters in New York hadn’t suddenly been on red alert.
I found this out from Perry Barkwell, the satyr who had brought her in. He’d been surprised; apparently he’d scouted her school for several years without realising she was one of us.
'What do you mean they’re on red alert?' I asked.
Perry chewed nervously on the edge of a cardboard box. 'I really shouldn’t say …'
'My friend Grover’s out there. I’m worried about him. If the monsters are getting more active …'
'I’m sure he’s fine. Chiron’s with him, isn’t he?'
'He is?'
'Yeah, apparently he thinks he’s found someone really powerful.'
My eyes widened. Perry seemed to realise he’d said too much and clammed up. I couldn’t get any more out of him after that.
Life at camp went on. Mr D had found a short-term substitute for Chiron, but the stand-in activities director, Triptolemus, was pretty boring. His idea of a good activity was plowing the fields, and upon discovering that all we had was a strawberry crop, he proceeded to set us to sowing a wheat field. This delighted the Demeter cabin, who threw themselves happily into the task. The rest of us were a little less thrilled to be sent out into the fields to do boring, back-breaking work.
Every night, I read more of The Iliad. Malcolm noticed what I was doing and started to ask me about it. I read some of it to him, explaining the parts that were harder to understand, and adding some of the other myths I knew, like the ones Ariadne had told us on Olympus. That, of course, led to a discussion about the winter solstice field trip. Before I knew it, a whole crowd of kids-mostly younger, but some of the older ones, too-wanted to know more about the stuff I was telling Malcolm, and I found myself giving an impromptu lecture on Ancient Greece.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It was something like what my father did for a living-he was a history professor at West Point-and he wasn’t exactly the role model I wanted to emulate.
May rolled around, and more satyrs started to trip back as their respective school terms let up. They all returned alone, some of them dejected by failures (every year, there were half-bloods who inevitably got killed), others reporting that the demigods they’d located hadn’t come into their scent yet and would likely last another year undetected. They all seemed uneasy about something they’d learned when they were out, though, something they refused to talk about with the campers. If we walked by when they were discussing it, they’d shut right up. The only thing I managed to confirm was that something was wrong on Olympus.
The only way I was going to get any real information out of them was if they couldn’t see me coming.
And then I realised I had the perfect weapon. It was time to put my birthday present to good use.
It was risky to sneak around in the Big House-the one time I’d tried, I’d gotten caught almost right away-but I planned it out carefully. I chose an afternoon when Triptolemus was overseeing was weeding of the furthest field and Mr D had set up a pinochle game with the elder satyrs. It would be even safer if Mr D was actually away, but I figured that my best chance of hearing anything about the gods would be to eavesdrop on the satyrs’ actual conversation with one.
First I made sure to let Triptolemus see me with the other campers. He still couldn’t remember our names, but he always ticked off our attendance right at the beginning of fieldwork. I then picked the furthest corner of the field and disappeared among the highest weeds, hunching over so they would obscure me, and put on the Yankees cap.
My body vanished. Slowly, so as not to rustle the crops too much and give away my own position, I inched back round to the edge of the fields. Once I was past Triptolemus, I sprinted for the Big House. Invisible, I slipped past the infirmary (it was unusually crowded, mostly because half the Hermes cabin was faking sick to get out of the fields) and sidled up near the door that opened out to the back porch. I knew I couldn’t get too close, because satyrs could sense emotions and I didn’t want them realising I was hanging about.
I heard the nervous bleating laugh of one of the satyrs. 'He’s really mad. I don’t want to know what will happen if he doesn’t get it back by the summer solstice.'
'Well, it definitely wasn’t at any of the schools we scouted,' another satyr said. 'And it’s not here, obviously. Whoever stole it hid it good.'
There was no sign of Mr D-he didn’t appear to have joined the satyrs at the card table yet, but that didn’t matter. The satyrs’ conversation was already informative enough.
'Do you really think it’s stolen?'
'Of course-would a god misplace something like that?'
'But you know, even if he figures out where it is, the rules won’t let him fetch it himself. He’d need a hero to do it for him.'
'A quest?'
'If it’s really one of the sons, though …'
I listened intently, definitely interested now. I hoped they might work back around to what exactly was stolen. This was exactly what I needed to know.
'A son of Zeus? He wouldn’t steal from his dad.'
'He could get it back, though.'
Loud plodding footsteps sounded down the hall, accompanied by the scraping of a wheel on the wooden farmhouse floor. I held my breath as Mr D advanced, followed by a man in a wheelchair.
'At least you’re back at last from that fool’s errand,' Mr D said irritably. 'I can finally get rid of Triptolemus’s idiotic wheat fields.'
I stifled a grin at the thought that Mr D was as irked by the wheat fields as we were, then the meaning of his words sank in. Completely forgetting I was invisible, I squealed, 'Chiron!'
'Furies of Hades!' Mr D cried. 'Who’s there?'
Mortified, I pulled off my invisibility cap. 'Sorry, sir.'
'Annabeth? What on Olympus are you doing?' Chiron said. He was dressed in one of the fancy shirts I’d seen on his armchair when he was packing. He rose out of the wheelchair, returning to his stallion half.
'Um, welcoming you back,' I said quickly.
Mr D gave me the stink-eye. 'Go get those lazy brats out of the infirmary. We’re closing the fields, so you can tell them there’s no need to pretend any more.'
'Pretend?' Chiron said.
I let Mr D fill him in. When a god gives you an order, you don’t wait around or disobey. I quickly ran down the hallway to give the others the good news.
Chapter 4