Stark's Deadly Daughter (S.P.N.D. Book 4)

Chapter 6: Percy Needs To Learn His Mythology

***

The way Tantalus saw it, the Stymphalian birds had simply been minding their own business in the woods and would not have attacked if Annabeth, Tyson, and Percy hadn't disturbed them with their bad chariot driving.

This was so completely unfair, I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut, which didn't help his mood. He sentenced my three friends and I to kitchen patrol: scrubbing pots and platters all afternoon in the underground kitchen with the cleaning harpies. The harpies washed with lava instead of water, to get that extra-clean sparkle and kill ninety-nine point nine percent of all germs, so Annabeth and Percy had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons. Tyson didn't mind.

He plunged his bare hands right in and started scrubbing, but Annabeth and Percy had to suffer through hours of hot, dangerous work, especially since there were tons of extra plates. Tantalus had ordered a special luncheon banquet to celebrate Clarisse's chariot victory- a full-course meal featuring country-fried Stymphalian death-bird.

The only good thing about our punishment was that it gave Annabeth and Percy a common enemy and lots of time to talk. After listening to his dream about Grover again, she looked like she might be starting to believe him. I knew what it was like to have hard-to-believe dreams about friends and family, so I never had many doubts. A few, but not many.

"If he's really found it," she murmured, "and if we could retrieve it-"

"Hold on," I said. "You act like this...whatever-it-is Grover found is the only thing in the world that could save the camp. What is it?"

"I'll give you both a hint. What do you get when you skin a ram?"

"Messy?" Percy retorted.

She sighed. "A fleece. The coat of a ram is called a fleece. And if that ram happens to have golden wool-"

I almost dropped the plate I had been scrubbing in surprise. Percy's jaw dropped. "The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?" He asked her.

Annabeth scraped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. "Percy, remember the Gray Sisters? They said they knew the location of the thing you seek. And they mentioned Jason. Three thousand years ago, they told him how to find the Golden Fleece. You do know the story of Jason and the Argonauts?"

"The Hecate did I miss when I shadow-traveled here?"

Percy ignored me. "Yeah. That old movie with the clay skeletons."

Annabeth and I roll our eyes. "Oh my gods, Percy! You are so hopeless." Annabeth told him.

"What?" He demanded.

Annabeth put up her hands, telling him to wait. "Just listen. The real story of the Fleece: there were these two children of Zeus, Cadmus and Europa, okay? They were about to get offered up as human sacrifices, when they prayed to Zeus to save them. So Zeus sent this magical flying ram with golden wool, which picked them up in Greece and carried them all the way to Colchis in Asia Minor. Well, actually it carried Cadmus. Europa fell off and died along the way, but that's not important."

"It was probably important to her."

"The point is, when Cadmus got to Colchis, he sacrificed the golden ram to the gods and hung the Fleece in a tree in the middle of the kingdom. The Fleece brought prosperity to the land. Animals stopped getting sick. Plants grew better. Farmers had bumper crops. Plagues never visited. That's why Jason wanted the Fleece. It can revitalize any land where it's placed. It cures sickness, strengthens nature, cleans up pollution-"

"It could cure Thalia's tree." Percy realized.

Annabeth nodded. "And it would totally strengthen the borders of Camp Half-Blood. But Percy, the Fleece has been missing for centuries. Tons of heroes have searched for it with no luck."