فصل 03

“HERE they come!” Meg yelled.

Honestly, whenever I wanted her to talk about something important, she shut up. But when we were facing an obvious danger, she wasted her breath yelling Here they come.

Grover increased his pace, showing heroic strength as he bounded up the ramp, hauling my flabby duct-taped carcass behind him.

Facing backward, I had a perfect view of the strixes as they swirled out of the shadows, their yellow eyes flashing like coins in a murky fountain. A dozen birds? More? Given how much trouble we’d had with a single strix, I didn’t like our chances against an entire flock, especially since we were now lined up like juicy targets on a narrow, slippery ledge. I doubted Meg could help all the birds commit suicide by whacking them face-first into the wall.

“Arbutus!” I yelled. “The arrow said something about arbutus repelling strixes.”

“That’s a plant.” Grover gasped for air. “I think I met an arbutus once.”

“Arrow,” I said, “what is an arbutus?”

I KNOW NOT! BECAUSE I WAS BORN IN A GROVE DOTH NOT MAKETH ME A GARDENER!

Disgusted, I shoved the arrow back into my quiver.

“Apollo, cover me.” Meg thrust one of her swords into my hand, then rifled through her gardening belt, glancing nervously at the strixes as they ascended.

How Meg expected me to cover her, I wasn’t sure. I was garbage at swordplay, even when I wasn’t duct-taped to a satyr’s back and facing targets that would curse anyone who killed them.

“Grover!” Meg yelled. “Can we figure out what type of plant an arbutus is?”

She ripped open a random packet and tossed seeds into the void. They burst like heated popcorn kernels and formed grenade-size yams with leafy green stems. They fell among the flock of strixes, hitting a few and causing startled squawking, but the birds kept coming.

“Those are tubers,” Grover wheezed. “I think an arbutus is a fruit plant.”

Meg ripped open a second seed packet. She showered the strixes with an explosion of bushes dotted with green fruits. The birds simply veered around them.

“Grapes?” Grover asked.

“Gooseberries,” said Meg.

“Are you sure?” Grover asked. “The shape of the leaves—”

“Grover!” I snapped. “Let’s restrict ourselves to military botany. What’s a—? DUCK!”

Now, gentle reader, you be the judge. Was I asking the question What’s a duck? Of course I wasn’t. Despite Meg’s later complaints, I was trying to warn her that the nearest strix was charging straight at her face.

She didn’t understand my warning, which was not my fault.

I swung my borrowed scimitar, attempting to protect my young friend. Only my terrible aim and Meg’s quick reflexes prevented me from decapitating her.

“Stop that!” she yelled, swatting the strix aside with her other blade.

“You said cover me!” I protested.

“I didn’t mean—” She cried out in pain, stumbling as a bloody cut opened along her right thigh.

Then we were engulfed in an angry storm of talons, beaks, and black wings. Meg swung her scimitar wildly. A strix launched itself at my face, its claws about to rip my eyes out, when Grover did the unexpected: he screamed.

Why is that surprising? you may be asking. When you’re swarmed by entrail-devouring birds, it is a perfect time to scream.

True. But the sound that came from the satyr’s mouth was no ordinary cry.

It reverberated through the chamber like the shock wave of a bomb, scattering the birds, shaking the stones, and filling me with cold, unreasoning fear.

Had I not been duct-taped to the satyr’s back, I would have fled. I would have jumped off the ledge just to get away from that sound. As it was, I dropped Meg’s sword and clamped my hands over my ears. Meg, lying prone on the ramp, bleeding and no doubt already partially paralyzed by the strix’s poison, curled into a ball and buried her head in her arms.

The strixes fled back down into the darkness.

My heart pounded. Adrenaline surged through me. I needed several deep breaths before I could speak.

“Grover,” I said, “did you just summon Panic?”

I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him shaking. He lay down on the ramp, rolling to one side so I faced the wall.

“I didn’t mean to.” Grover’s voice was hoarse. “Haven’t done that in years.”

“P-panic?” Meg asked.

“The cry of the lost god Pan,” I said. Even saying his name filled me with sadness. Ah, what good times the nature god and I had had in ancient days, dancing and cavorting in the wilderness! Pan had been a first-class cavorter. Then humans destroyed most of the wilderness, and Pan faded into nothing. You humans. You’re why we gods can’t have nice things.

“I’ve never heard anyone but Pan use that power,” I said. “How?”

Grover made a sound that was half sob, half sigh. “Long story.”

Meg grunted. “Got rid of the birds, anyway.” I heard her ripping fabric, probably making a bandage for her leg.

“Are you paralyzed?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she muttered. “Waist down.”

Grover shifted in our duct-tape harness. “I’m still okay, but exhausted. The birds will be back, and there’s no way I can carry you up the ramp now.”

I did not doubt him. The shout of Pan would scare away almost anything, but it was a taxing bit of magic. Every time Pan used it, he would take a three-day nap afterward.

Below us, the strixes’ cries echoed through the Labyrinth. Their screeching already sounded like it was turning from fear—Fly away!—to confusion: Why are we flying away?

I tried to wriggle my feet. To my surprise, I could now feel my toes inside my socks.

“Can someone cut me loose?” I asked. “I think the poison is losing strength.”

From her horizontal position, Meg used a scimitar to saw me out of the duct tape. The three of us lined up with our backs literally to the wall—three sweaty, sad, pathetic pieces of strix bait waiting to die. Below us, the squawking of the doom birds got louder. Soon they’d be back, angrier than ever. About fifty feet above us, just visible now in the dim glint of Meg’s swords, our ramp dead-ended at a domed brick ceiling.

“So much for an exit,” Grover said. “I thought for sure…This shaft looks so much like…” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t bear to tell us what he’d hoped.

“I’m not dying here,” Meg grumbled.

Her appearance said otherwise. She had bloody knuckles and skinned knees. Her green dress, a prized gift from Percy Jackson’s mother, looked like it had been used as a saber-toothed tiger’s scratching post. She had ripped off her left legging and used it to stanch the bleeding cut on her thigh, but the fabric was already soaked through.

Nevertheless, her eyes shone defiantly. The rhinestones still glittered on the tips of her cat-eye glasses. I’d learned never to count out Meg McCaffrey while her rhinestones still glittered.

She rummaged through her seed packages, squinting at the labels. “Roses. Daffodils. Squash. Carrots.”

“No…” Grover bumped his fist against his forehead. “Arbutus is like…a flowering tree. Argh, I should know this.”

I sympathized with his memory problems. I should have known many things: the weaknesses of strixes, the nearest secret exit from the Labyrinth, Zeus’s private number so I could call him and plead for my life. But my mind was blank. My legs had begun to tremble—perhaps a sign I would soon be able to walk again—but this didn’t cheer me up. I had nowhere to go, except to choose whether I wanted to die at the top of this chamber or the bottom.

Meg kept shuffling seed packets. “Rutabaga, wisteria, pyracantha, strawberries—”

“Strawberries!” Grover yelped so loudly I thought he was trying for another blast of Panic. “That’s it! The arbutus is a strawberry tree!”

Meg frowned. “Strawberries don’t grow on trees. They’re genus Fragaria, part of the rose family.”

“Yes, yes, I know!” Grover rolled his hands like he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. “And Arbutus is in the heath family, but—”

“What are you two talking about?” I demanded. I wondered if they were sharing the Arrow of Dodona’s Wi-Fi connection to look up information on botany.com. “We’re about to die, and you’re arguing about plant genera?”

“Fragaria might be close enough!” Grover insisted. “Arbutus fruit looks like strawberries. That’s why it’s called a strawberry tree. I met an arbutus dryad once. We got in this big argument about it. Besides, I specialize in strawberry-growing. All the satyrs from Camp Half-Blood do!”

Meg stared doubtfully at her packet of strawberry seeds. “I dunno.”

Below us, a dozen strixes burst forth from the mouth of the tunnel, shrieking in a chorus of pre-disembowelment fury.

“TRY THE FRAGGLE ROCK!” I yelled.

“Fragaria,” Meg corrected.

“WHATEVER!”

Rather than throwing her strawberry seeds into the void, Meg ripped open the packet and shook them out along the edge of the ramp with maddening slowness.

“Hurry.” I fumbled for my bow. “We’ve got maybe thirty seconds.”

“Hold on.” Meg tapped out the last of the seeds.

“Fifteen seconds!”

“Wait.” Meg tossed aside the packet. She placed her hands over the seeds like she was about to play the keyboard (which, by the way, she can’t do well, despite my efforts to teach her).

“Okay,” she said. “Go.”

Grover raised his pipes and began a frantic version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” in triple time. I forgot about my bow and grabbed my ukulele, joining him in the song. I didn’t know if it would help, but if I was going to get ripped apart, at least I wanted to go out playing the Beatles.

Just as the wave of strixes was about to hit, the seeds exploded like a battery of fireworks. Green streamers arced across the void, anchoring against the far wall and forming a row of vines that reminded me of the strings of a giant lute. The strixes could have easily flown through the gaps, but instead they went crazy, veering to avoid the plants and colliding with each other in midair.

Meanwhile, the vines thickened, leaves unfurled, white flowers bloomed, and strawberries ripened, filling the air with their sweet fragrance.

The chamber rumbled. Wherever the strawberry plants touched the stone, the brick cracked and dissolved, giving the strawberries an easier place to root.

Meg lifted her hands from her imaginary keyboard. “Is the Labyrinth…helping?”

“I don’t know!” I said, strumming furiously on an F minor 7. “But don’t stop!”

With impossible speed, the strawberries spread across the walls in a tide of green.

I was just thinking Wow, imagine what the plants could do with sunlight! when the domed ceiling cracked like an eggshell. Brilliant rays stabbed through the darkness. Chunks of rock rained down, smashing into the birds, punching through strawberry vines (which, unlike the strixes, grew back almost immediately).

As soon as the sunlight hit the birds, they screamed and dissolved into dust.

Grover lowered his panpipe. I set down my ukulele. We watched in amazement as the plants continued to grow, interlacing until a strawberry-runner trampoline stretched across the entire area of the room at our feet.

The ceiling had disintegrated, revealing a brilliant blue sky. Hot dry air wafted down like the breath from an open oven.

Grover raised his face to the light. He sniffled, tears glistening on his cheeks.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

He stared at me. The heartbreak on his face was more painful to look at than the sunlight.

“The smell of warm strawberries,” he said. “Like Camp Half-Blood. It’s been so long….”

I felt an unfamiliar twinge in my chest. I patted Grover’s knee. I had not spent much time at Camp Half-Blood, the training ground for Greek demigods on Long Island, but I understood how he felt. I wondered how my children were doing there: Kayla, Will, Austin. I remembered sitting with them at the campfire, singing “My Mother Was a Minotaur” as we ate burnt marshmallows off a stick. Such perfect camaraderie is rare, even in an immortal life.

Meg leaned against the wall. Her complexion was pasty, her breathing ragged.

I dug through my pockets and found a broken square of ambrosia in a napkin. I did not keep the stuff for myself. In my mortal state, eating the food of the gods might cause me to spontaneously combust. But Meg, I had found, was not always good about taking her ambrosia.

“Eat.” I pressed the napkin into her hand. “It’ll help the paralysis pass more quickly.”

She clenched her jaw, as if about to yell I DON’T WANNA!, then apparently decided she liked the idea of having working legs again. She began nibbling on the ambrosia.

“What’s up there?” she asked, frowning at the blue sky.

Grover brushed the tears from his face. “We’ve made it. The Labyrinth brought us right to our base.”

“Our base?” I was delighted to learn we had a base. I hoped that meant security, a soft bed, and perhaps an espresso machine.

“Yeah.” Grover swallowed nervously. “Assuming anything is left of it. Let’s find out.”