“As for Sadie, she didn’t appear interested in strategy. She leaped from puddle to puddle in her combat boots. She hummed to herself, twirled like a little kid and occasionally pulled random things out of her backpack: wax animal figurines, some string, a piece of chalk, a bright yellow bag of candy.
She reminded me of someone …
Then it occurred to me. She looked like a younger version of Annabeth, but her fidgeting and hyperness reminded me of … well, me. If Annabeth and I ever had a daughter, she might be a lot like Sadie.
Whoa.
It’s not like I’d never dreamed about kids before. I mean, you date someone for over a year, the idea is going to be in the back of your mind somewhere, right? But still – I’m barely seventeen. I’m not ready to think too seriously about stuff like that. Also, I’m a demigod. On a day-to-day basis, I’m busy just trying to stay alive.
Yet, looking at Sadie, I could imagine that someday maybe I’d have a little girl who looked like Annabeth and acted like me – a cute little hellion of a demigod, stomping through puddles and flattening monsters with magic camels.”
“I tried to look confused, which is one of my most convincing expressions.”
“Annabeth jogged towards us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you.”
“Setne’s dangerous,’ Annabeth said. ‘We can’t just go charging in. We need a plan.’
‘She’s right,’ Carter said.
‘I kind of like charging in,’ I said. ‘Speed is of the essence, right?’
‘Thank you,’ Sadie muttered.
‘Being smart is also of the essence,’ Annabeth said.
‘Exactly,’ Carter said. ‘We have to figure out how to attack.’
Sadie rolled her eyes at me. ‘Just as I feared. These two together … they’ll overthink us to death.’
I felt the same way, but Annabeth was getting that annoyed stormy look in her eyes and, since I date Annabeth, I figured I’d better suggest a compromise.
‘How about we plan while we walk?’ I said. ‘We can charge south, like, really slowly.”
“Charge!’ Sadie barrelled into the clearing, her staff in one hand and her Greek scroll in the other.
I glanced at Annabeth. ‘Your new friend is awesome.’
Then I followed Sadie.”
“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?’ Wadjet roared. ‘YOU DARE TAKE A SELFIE WITH THE COBRA GODDESS?”
“Mine is a khopesh ,’ Carter said. ‘The original Egyptian version. What you’re holding is a kopis – a Greek design adapted from the Egyptian original. It’s the kind of sword Ptolemy’s warriors would’ve used.’
I looked at Sadie. ‘Is he trying to confuse me?’
‘No,’ she said brightly. ‘He’s confusing without trying.”
“I kissed her, because 1) when you’re a demigod going into battle, every kiss might be your last, and 2) I like kissing her.”
“Percy, explaining things to you is like lecturing a gerbil.”
“Her face had an imperious, timeless quality that I’d learned to recognize. It meant I’m a goddess; deal with it.”
“Annabeth has my number,’ Sadie said. ‘Which, honestly, brother, is a much easier solution than writing invisible hieroglyphs on your friend’s hand. What were you thinking?”
“I’d have to play this smart … which was not my usual style.”
“Do you know how to mix our powers?’ I asked.
Carter’s shoes squished in the mud. ‘Well … not exactly.’
‘Oh, please,’ Sadie said. ‘That’s easy. Carter, give your wand to Percy.’
‘Why?’
‘Just do it, brother dear. Annabeth, do you remember when we fought Serapis?’
‘Right!’ Annabeth’s eyes lit up. ‘I grabbed Sadie’s wand and it turned into a Celestial bronze dagger, just like my old one. It was able to destroy Serapis’s staff. Maybe we can create another Greek weapon from an Egyptian wand. Good idea, Sadie.’
‘Cheers. You see, I don’t need to spend hours planning and researching to be brilliant. Now, Carter, if you please.”
“Giant-chicken mode,’ I remembered.
‘Dude, my avatar is a falcon-headed warrior .’
‘I still think you could get a sponsorship deal with KFC. Make some big bucks.”
“Knock it off, you two.’ Annabeth handed her scroll to Sadie. ‘Carter, let’s trade. I’ll try your khopesh ; you try my Yankees cap.’
She tossed him the hat.
‘I’m usually more of a basketball guy, but …’ Carter put on the cap and disappeared. ‘Wow, okay. I’m invisible, aren’t I?’
Sadie applauded. ‘You’ve never looked better, brother dear.’
‘Very funny.’
‘If you can sneak up on Setne,’ Annabeth suggested, ‘you might be able to take him by surprise, get the crown away from him.’
‘But you told us Setne saw right through your invisibility,’ Carter said.
‘That was me ,’ Annabeth said, ‘a Greek using a Greek magic item. For you, maybe it’ll work better – or differently, at least.’
‘Carter, give it a shot,’ I said. ‘The only thing better than a giant chicken man is a giant invisible chicken man.”
“Looking at her was disorientating. The ‘Percy’ part of me saw my usual awesome girlfriend. The ‘Nekhbet’ part of me saw a young woman surrounded by a powerful ultraviolet aura – the mark of a Greek demigod. The sight filled me with disdain and fear. (For the record: I have my own healthy fear of Annabeth. She has kicked my butt on more than one occasion. But disdain? Not so much. That was all Nekhbet.)”
“Setne stopped chanting when he saw me.
‘Awesome!’ He grinned. ‘You brought the vulture with you. Thanks!’
Not the reaction I’d been hoping for. I keep waiting for the day when the bad guy sees me and screams, I give up! But it hasn’t happened yet.”
“That’s – that’s not fair,’ Sadie said, her voice trembling. ‘Tempting me with destruction.”
“My host needs a certain level of simplicity," the goddess continued. "Percy Jackson is perfect. He is powerful, yet his mind is not overly crowded with plans and ideas."
"Wow," I said. "Really feeling the love here.”
“My mouth went dry. I imagined Annabeth invoking hieroglyphs at Camp Half-Blood, blowing up chariots on the racetrack, hurling giant blue fists during capture the flag. ‘So my girlfriend is a magician now, like, permanently? Because she was scary enough before.”
“For once you’re right, brother dear,’ Sadie said. ‘As much as I’d love to be a literal goddess, I suppose I’ll have to remain a figurative one.”
“She kissed me, and I decided that I was glad too. A kiss in the sunset and the promise of a good bacon cheeseburger – with that kind of payoff, who needs immortality?”
“Across the field, Carter’s voice yelled: ‘STAHP!’
I guess stahp is actually a word in Ancient Egyptian. Who knew?”
“I mean … we’d just passed our one-year dating anniversary. I figured I was a sort of long-term investment for her. She hoped I would pay dividends eventually; if I died now, she would’ve put up with all my annoying qualities for nothing.”
“Annabeth rubbed the clay beads on her necklace, the way she does when she’s thinking. She looked beautiful. But I digress.”
“We need a very potent hybrid attack, an abomination even Ptolemy would approve of.’
‘Why are you looking at me?’ I asked. ‘I’m not abominable.’
‘You are a son of Poseidon,’ the goddess noted. ‘That would be a most unexpected combination.’
‘Combination? What –’
‘Oh, no, no, no.’ Sadie raised her hands. She looked horrified, and anything that could scare that girl I did not want to know about.”
“When I realized I was hovering at the centre of a giant glowing purple vulture, my first thought was: Carter will never stop teasing me about this.”
“Also he stole my sword,’ I said. ‘I want it back.’
The three of them stared at me.
‘What?’ I said. ‘I like my sword.”
“I guess he, like, passed the test, so he threw away his notes.' Annabeth looked horrified. 'Are you crazy? You throw away your notes after a test?' 'Doesn't everybody, Miss Brainiac?”
“Being dyslexic, I’m lucky if I can recognize English words, but, being a demigod, Ancient Greek is sort of hardwired into my brain. ‘Ke-rau-noh,’ I pronounced. ‘Blast?’
Annabeth gave me a wicked little smile. ‘Closest term I could think of. Literally it means strike with lightning bolts .’
‘Ooh,’ Sadie said. ‘I love striking things with lightning bolts.”
“Well,” Leigh said, because there was nothing else. She looked back at the picture of herself and Pam in the blue dresses. “We did have it easier than she did. I’m sure we did. And I should thank her for that, I guess.”
Pam nodded. She looked calm, untroubled. Leigh, tapped her foot on the ottoman and glanced at her mother’s photographs. “But it felt like that was all she saw when she looked at us.” She leaned forward to get Pam’s attention. She wanted her sister to understand, to see things the way she had. “You know? I always felt like she never saw me, me as a individual. Do you know what I am saying? She gave us everything she ever wanted. But she never thought about what we wanted that it may be different. Or that we might need something that she didn’t. She never saw us separate from herself. She never saw us.” She paused, nodding in agreement with herself. That was it. She decided. She’d never put words to the feeling before, but that was it. That had been the whole trouble between them.
But when she looked back at Pam, her satisfaction vanished. Her sister’s mouth was pulled tight, her eyes wide. She looked away from Leigh, saying nothing, still the loyal confidante. But Leigh already knew. She knew what she couldn’t guess before, what Pam thought of the two of them on the porch swing, Kara talking, Pam listening. Leigh didn’t have to guess anymore. She could hear the words come out of her daughter’s mouth as clearly as they’d just come out of her own.”
“In my experience, boys are predictable. As soon as they think of something, they do it. Girls are smarter—they plan ahead. They think about not getting caught.”
“You haven't forgotten what it feels like to lose a friend because of a child, I hope?" If course I hadn't forgotten that feeling of being abruptly pushed out of a close circle to some distant periphery. Coming second, third, fourth, last. Being treated like someone less knowledgeable, someone inferior.”
“Words, it seems, are like felt pens. If you don't use them for a while they dry up.”
“They never lost their way or seemed even momentarily uncertain of their location. They traveled narrow paths cut through tuckamore and bog or took shortcuts along the shoreline, chancing the unpredictable sea ice. Every hill and pond and stand of trees, every meadow and droke for miles was named and catalogued in their heads. At night they navigated by the moon and stars or by counting outcrops and valleys or by the smell of spruce and salt water and wood smoke. It seemed to Newman they had an additional sense lost to modern men for lack of use.”
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