chapter V

🌷 The sun was setting behind the dining pavilion as the campers came up from their cabins for dinner. Percy stood in the shadow of a marble column and watched them file in. Annabeth was still pretty shaken up, but she promised she'd talk to the rest of them later. Then she went off to join her siblings from the Athena cabin - a dozen boys and girls with gray eyes like hers.

Annabeth wasn't the oldest, but she'd been at camp more summers than just about anybody. You could tell that by looking at her camp necklace - one bead for every summer, and Annabeth had six. No one questioned her right to lead the line.

Next came Clarisse, leading the Ares cabin. She had one arm in a sling and a nasty-looking gash on her cheek, but otherwise her encounter with the bronze bulls didn't seem to have fazed her. Someone had taped a piece of paper to her back that said, YOU MOO, GIRL! But nobody in her cabin was bothering to tell her about it.

After the Ares kids came the Hephaestus cabin-six guys led by Charles Beckendorf, a big fifteen-year-old kid. He had hands the size of catchers' mitts and a face that was hard and squinty from looking into a blacksmiths forge all day. He was nice enough once you got to know him, but no one ever called him Charlie or Chuck or Charles. Most just called him Beckendorf. Rumor was he could make anything. Give him a chunk of metal and he could create a razor-sharp sword or a robotic warrior or a singing birdbath for your grandmother's garden. Whatever you wanted.

The other cabins filed in: Demeter, Apollo, Aphrodite, Dionysus. Naiads came up from the canoe lake. Dryads melted out of the trees. From the meadow came a dozen satyrs, who reminded Daphne painfully of Grover.

She'd always had a soft spot for the satyrs. When they were at camp, they had to do all kinds of odd jobs for Mr. D, the director, but their most important work was out in the real world. They were the camp's seekers. They went undercover into schools all over the world, looking for potential half-bloods and escorting them back to camp. That's how she'd met Grover. He had been the first one to recognize that she and Thalia were demigods plagued by monsters, not their own sanity. He saved them.

After the satyrs filed in to dinner, the Hermes cabin brought up the rear. They were always the biggest cabin. Last summer it had been led by Luke, and well, Daphne didn't really want to think about it, thank you very much.

Now the Hermes cabin was led by Travis and Connor Stoll. They weren't twins, but they looked so much alike it didn't matter. Daphne could never remember which one was older. They were both tall and skinny, with mops of brown hair that hung in their eyes. They wore orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD t-shirts untucked over baggy shorts, and they had those elfish features all Hermes's kids had: upturned eyebrows, sarcastic smiles, a gleam in their eyes whenever they looked at you - like they were about to drop a firecracker down your shirt.

Daphne didn't really belong among them, but they had welcomed her for the time being, which she was forever grateful for. There were other heads in the cabin which felt like kindred spirits; ones who didn't really belong, but whose parents couldn't be bothered to tell them as such.

As soon as the last campers had filed in, Percy led Tyson into the middle of the pavilion. Conversations faltered. Heads turned. "Who invited that?" somebody at the Apollo table murmured.

Percy glared in their direction, but he couldn't figure out who'd spoken. He assumed it was that Lee guy Daphne was talking to earlier. He didn't know why, but something about him was too untrustworthy for him to like.

Daphne stood and sidestepped over to them hastily. She felt a certain sense of protectiveness over Tyson, considering she was the one who'd granted him access to the camp.

From the head table a familiar voice drawled, "Well, well, if it isn't Peter Johnson. My millennium is complete."

He gritted his teeth. "Percy Jackson... sir."

Mr. D sipped his Diet Coke. "Yes. Well, as you young people say these days: Whatever."

He was wearing his usual leopard-pattern Hawaiian shirt, walking shorts, and tennis shoes with black socks. With his  groomed beard and his blotchy red face, he looked like a Las Vegas tourist who'd stayed up too late in the casinos. Behind him, a nervous-looking satyr was peeling the skins off grapes and handing them to Mr. D one at a time.

(Mr. D's real name was Dionysus. The god of wine. Zeus appointed him director of Camp Half-Blood to dry out for a hundred years - a punishment for chasing some off-limits wood nymph.)

Next to him, where Chiron usually sat (or stood in centaur form), was someone Daphne had never seen before - a pale, horribly thin man in a threadbare orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The number over his pocket read 0001. He had blue shadows under his eyes, dirty fingernails, and badly cut gray hair, like his last haircut had been done with a weed whacker. He stared at them and his eyes made her terribly nervous. He looked... fractured. Angry and frustrated and hungry all at the same time.

"This boy," Dionysus told him, "you need to watch. Poseidon's child, you know."

"Ah!" the prisoner said. "That one."

His tone made it obvious that he and Dionysus had already discussed Percy at length.

"I am Tantalus," the prisoner said, smiling coldly. "On special assignment here until, well, until my Lord Dionysus decides otherwise. And you, Perseus Jackson, I do expect you to refrain from causing any more trouble."

"Trouble?" he demanded.

Dionysus snapped his fingers. A newspaper appeared on the table-the front page of today's New York Post, and Daphnes blood went cold. There was his yearbook picture from Meriwether Prep, where his hair was all messed up and his eyes were half-closed. It was hard her for to make out the headline, but she had a pretty good guess what it said - probably something like, Thirteen-Year-Old Lunatic Torches Gymnasium.

"Yes, trouble," Tantalus said with satisfaction. "You caused plenty of it last summer, I understand. Now, I assume it is you who is responsible for bringing this dreadful creature to camp?"

Percy was too mad to speak. Like it was his fault the gods had almost gotten into a civil war? He clenched his fists.

Daphne jumped in, "No, sir, if you'd please - I'm the one who granted him permission to come through. You see, th-"

"And who are you?" his eyes looked dead inside of sunken sockets as they fell onto her.

"Um, Daphne Everlark, sir," she didn't want to address him with a title of authority but she guessed that she shouldn't cross a guy who looked desperate enough to eat her. "Unclaimed. You see, we were being attacked, and the only way Percy and I would've survived-"

Mr. D yawned loudly.

She frowned at the interruption. "We - we would've been killed by the bull if not for Tyson. He's a hero."

"Oh, bother," Mr. D rolled his eyes. "You let the monster in at the expense of two little campers? The other option would've been much more preferable."

Daphne and Percy exchanged a look which read a lot like this:

'I'm just about ready to pulverise this guy.'

'Don't. He's a god, you'll end up on his trophy wall.'

'He just said he would've rather we died.'

'...let me think about it.'

A satyr inched forward nervously and set a plate of barbecue in front of Tantalus. The new activities director licked his lips. He looked at his empty goblet and said, "Root beer. Barq's special stock. 1967."

The glass filled itself with foamy soda. Tantalus stretched out his hand hesitantly, as if he were afraid the goblet was hot.

"Go on, then, old fellow," Dionysus said, a strange sparkle in his eyes. "Perhaps now it will work."

Tantalus grabbed for the glass, but it scooted away before he could touch it. A few drops of root beer spilled, and Tantalus tried to dab them up with his fingers, but the drops rolled away like quicksilver before he could touch them. He growled and turned toward the plate of barbecue. He picked up a fork and tried to stab a piece of brisket, but the plate skittered down the table and flew off the end, straight into the coals of the brazier.

"Blast!" Tantalus muttered.

"Ah, well," Dionysus hummed, his voice dripping with false sympathy. "Perhaps a few more days. Believe me, old chap, working at this camp will be torture enough. I'm sure your old curse will fade eventually."

"Eventually," muttered Tantalus, staring at Dionysus's Diet Coke. "Do you have any idea how dry one's throat gets after three thousand years?"

"You're that spirit from the Fields of Punishment," Percy realised.

"Oh! Yeah. The one who stands in the lake with the fruit tree hanging over you, but you can't eat or drink anything." Daphne added. She couldn't remember what warranted his punishment, though...

Tantalus sneered at her. "A real scholar, aren't you, girl?"

"You must've done something really horrible when you were alive," Percy said, mildly impressed. "What was it?"

Tantalus's eyes narrowed. Behind him, the satyrs were shaking their heads vigorously, trying to warn him. Daphne tried to stifle a smirk by scratching her nose, eyes glinting at Percy. He never knew when to shut up, but she didn't hate it.

"I'll be watching you, Percy Jackson," Tantalus threatened. "I don't want any problems at my camp."

"Your camp has problems already... sir."

"Oh, go sit down, Johnson," Dionysus sighed. "I believe that table over there is yours - the one where no one else ever wants to sit."

His face was burning, but he knew better than to talk back, half of it motivated from Daphnes shake of her head. Dionysus was an overgrown brat, but he was an immortal, superpowerful overgrown brat  "Come on, Tyson." he muttered.

"Oh, no," Tantalus said, sounding almost sickly pleased. "The monster stays here. We must decide what to do with it."

"Him," Percy snapped. "His name is Tyson."

The new activities director raised an eyebrow.

"Like Daphne said, Tyson saved the camp," he insisted. "He pounded those bronze bulls. Otherwise they would've burned down this whole place."

"Yes," Tantalus sighed, "and what a pity that would've been."

Dionysus snickered.

"Leave us," Tantalus ordered, "while we decide this creature's fate."

Tyson looked at them with fear in his one big eye, but Percy knew he couldn't disobey a direct order from the camp directors. Not openly, anyway.

"I'll be right over here, big guy," he promised. "Don't worry. We'll find you a good place to sleep tonight."

Tyson nodded. "I believe you. You are my friend."

"And you, girl!" Tantalus called for her attention. Her head snapped back to him from where she had been looking back to the Hermes table. "Rest assured, correct punishment for allowing this monster in the camp will ensue-"

"What?" Daphne burst. "How in Hades' name is that fair?"

Tantalus grinned wickedly. "You have risked the safety of every camper here. And who would want these poor children being attacked by someone they thought was a friend?"

"That doesn't make any sense!" Percy snapped before she could. "she was saving us! We could all be dead without her thinking, and you're going to punish her for that?"

Daphne rested her hand on Percy's arm. "Whatever," she said angrily. "Let's just go, Percy. I can deal with dish duty."

"But-"

"Leave it," she commanded. "Don't make it worse than it already is."

Percy glared at her unhappily.

"Okay, Percy?" she added. He didn't relent his sneer, but pursed his lips tightly.

Mr D's eyes were blazing a slight purple now. When he commanded them to sit down again, Percy and Daphne exchanged a last look before separating to their tables.

She walked back to the Hermes table and slumped onto the bench. A few campers had to scooch over, groaning when they saw her coming back knowing that the table was already so crowded. A wood nymph brought her a plate of Olympian olive-and-pepperoni pizza, but she wasn't hungry. Daphne poked at it for a while with a fork, sick from the efforts of the day.

"You look chipper," the girl across from her snickered. She was another unclaimed girl, but had only been there for about six months. Kitty, she'd told them all to call her, had a sort of grunge-y look to her and short hair which was forever changing colours. Right now it was a bright red, which must've been new because she was getting quite a few double-takes. It complimented her pale skin and dark septum piercing.

Daphne glared at her. "Not in the mood today, Kitty."

She raised her hands in surrender and kept spooning her carbonara. "Alright, alright. Jeez, someone sucked all the fun out of you today. Where's your usual sunshine?"

Daphne didn't answer, but Travis slipped a slice of organic garlic bread off of Kittys plate and distracted her. She poked at her pizza miserably and stared at the usually appealing crust. Percy was frustrated, she was pretty sure Annabeth was angry at her, Tyson was afraid and Daphne was too stressed to realize how tired she actually was.

She didn't feel very thankful but still took her dinner, as was customary, up to the bronze brazier and scraped all of it into the flames. Every night you had to burn some of your food and pray for a God to accept your offering. Apparently they liked the smell. It was weird, but it was tradition.

"Hermes," she murmured, "accept my offering."

She didn't very well know who her mom was to send it to her, so she directed it toward the guy whose cabin she was stealing.

The smoke from the burning pizza changed into something fragrant - the smell of a fresh sheet of parchment like an old traveller's map with wildflowers mixed in, but Daphne had no idea if that meant Hermes was really listening.

(She didn't really care if he was. Luke had told her some stories about Hermes which didn't paint him in a pretty light. But then again, she wasn't sure if she could trust Luke at all anymore.)

Luke. Her head spun as she tried to shake away his haunting smile.

She went back to her seat, thinking things couldn't get much worse. She sat with her head in her arms, looking at a burn in the table furiously. But then Tantalus had one of the satyrs blow the conch horn to get the campers attention for announcements.

"Yes, well," Tantalus said, once the talking had died down. "Another fine meal! Or so I am told."

As he spoke, he inched his hand toward his refilled dinner plate, as if maybe the food wouldn't notice what he was doing, but it did. It shot away down the table as soon as he got within six inches.

Someone snorted at him from the Aphrodite cabin.

"And here on my first day of authority," he continued, "I'd like to say what a pleasant form of punishment it is to be here. Over the course of the summer, I hope to torture, er, interact with each and every one of you children. You all look good enough to eat."

Dionysus clapped politely, leading to some halfhearted applause from the satyrs. Tyson was still standing at the head table, looking uncomfortable, but every time he tried to scoot out of the limelight, Tantalus pulled him back.

"And now some changes!" Tantalus gave the campers a crooked smile. "We are reinstituting the chariot races!"

Murmuring broke out at all the tables - excitement, fear, disbelief. Daphne hadn't been lucky enough to be in camp before the chariot races were banned, but the stories of them alone were enough to intrigue her. She raised her head from her arms, finally interested.

"Now I know," Tantalus continued, raising his voice, "that these races were discontinued some years ago due to, ah, technical problems."

"Three deaths and twenty-six mutilations," someone at the Apollo table called.

"Yes, yes!" Tantalus waved it off. "But I know that you will all join me in welcoming the return of this camp tradition. Golden laurels will go to the winning charioteers each month. Teams may register in the morning! The first race will be held in three days time. We will release you from most of your regular activities to prepare your chariots and choose your horses. Oh, and did I mention, the victorious team's cabin will have no chores for the month in which they win?"

An explosion of excited conversation no KP for a whole month? No stable cleaning? Was he serious?

Daphne knew she needed to win. She was sure bringing Tyson to camp was going to result in a lot more chores than she wanted, and the Hermes cabin were stressed enough as it was after Luke's betrayal.

Then the last person Daphne expected to object did so.

"But, sir!" Clarisse said. She looked nervous, but she stood up to speak from the Ares table. Some of the campers snickered when they saw the YOU MOO, GIRL! sign on her back, and Daphne glared at them with as much power she could muster. "What about patrol duty? I mean, if we drop everything to ready our chariots-"

"Ah, the hero of the day," Tantalus exclaimed. "Brave Clarisse, who single-handedly bested the bronze bulls!"

Daphne frowned.

Clarisse blinked, then blushed. "Um, I didn't-"

"And modest, too." Tantalus grinned. "Not to worry, my dear! This is a summer camp. We are here to enjoy ourselves, yes?"

"But the tree-"

"And now," Tantalus said, as several of Clarisse's cabin mates pulled her back into her seat, "before we proceed to the campfire and sing-along, one slight housekeeping issue. Percy Jackson and Daphne Everlark have seen fit, for some reason, to bring this here."

Tantalus waved a hand toward Tyson.

Uneasy murmuring spread among the campers. A lot of sideways looks were shot at Daphne, and a few people even nudged away from her.

"Now, of course," he said, "Cyclopes have a reputation for being bloodthirsty monsters with a very small brain capacity. Under normal circumstances, I would release this beast into the woods and have you hunt it down with torches and pointed sticks. But who knows Perhaps this Cyclops is not as horrible as most of its brethren. Until it proves worthy of destruction, we need a place to keep it! I've thought about the stables, but that will make the horses nervous. Hermes's cabin, possibly?"

Silence at the Hermes table. Travis and Connor Stoll developed a sudden interest in the tablecloth. Daphne couldn't blame them. The Hermes cabin was always full to bursting. There was no way they could take in a six-foot-three Cyclops.

Daphne was shaking with rage at how he was talking about Tyson. She moved to stand and shout at him, but a few of her cabin mates pulled her down before she could.

"Come now," Tantalus chided. "The monster may be able to do some menial chores. Any suggestions as to where such a beast should be kenneled?"

Suddenly, everybody gasped. Daphne was too busy fighting off the arms of the Hermes cabin to have noticed what happened, but froze when they did.

Tantalus scooted away from Tyson in surprise. Daphne found Percy alone at the Posiedon table and watched his reaction. All he could do was stare in disbelief at the brilliant green light that was about to change his life - a dazzling holographic image that had appeared above Tyson's head.

Swirling over Tyson was a glowing green trident - the same symbol that had appeared above him the day Poseidon had claimed him as his son. The same symbol which hung as her first camp bead around her neck.

There was a moment of awed silence.

Being claimed was a rare event. Some campers waited in vain for it their whole lives, and Daphn shoveled down the quick shot of jealousy she felt. When Percy had been claimed by Poseidon last summer, everyone had reverently knelt. But now, they followed Tantalus's lead, and Tantalus roared with laughter. "Well! I think we know where to put the beast now. By the gods, I can see the family resemblance!"

Everybody laughed except Daphne, Annabeth and a few of Percy's other friends.

Tyson didn't seem to notice. He was too mystified, trying to swat the glowing trident that was now fading over his head. He was too innocent to understand how much they were making fun of him, how cruel people were.

But they all understood it. And just one look at Percy told her that he did too.

Tyson was his brother.

౨ৎ ˖ ࣪⊹ 𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒓'𝒔 𝒏𝒐𝒕𝒆
🌷🪷🌊

HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII (say it back)