Annabeth Chase and the Sea of Monsters

Chapter 7: I Accept Gifts From Strangers

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

This was so completely unfair, I told Tantalus to go chase a doughnut, which didn't help his mood. He sentenced us 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 Percy and I had to wear asbestos gloves and aprons.

Tyson didn't mind. He plunged his bare hands right in and started scrubbing, but Percy and I 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 Percy and me a common enemy and lots of time to talk. After listening to my dream about Grover again, he looked like he might be starting to believe me.

"If he's really found it," he 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 a hint. What do you get when you skin a ram?"

"Messy?"

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

"The Golden Fleece. Are you serious?"

Percy scraped a plateful of death-bird bones into the lava. "Annabeth, 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?"

"Yeah," I said. "That old movie with the clay skeletons."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Oh my gods, Annabeth! You are so hopeless."

"What?" I demanded.

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

"But Grover found it," I said. "He went looking for Pan and he found the Fleece instead because they both radiate nature magic. It makes sense, Percy. We can rescue him and save the camp at the same time. It's perfect!"

Percy hesitated. "A little too perfect, don't you think? What if it's a trap?"

I remembered last summer, how Kronos had manipulated our quest. He'd almost fooled us into helping him start a war that would've destroyed Western Civilization.