¹Pocket Full of Posies, p. jackson

viii. Between Scylla and Charybdis

chapter eight
❛ between scylla and charybdis ❜

━━━━━  IN A VERY Clarisse La Rue manner, she delivered some taunting alongside an (incredibly unwanted) tour of the CSS Birmingham. She stood on the starboard, hands on her hips, as she grinned wickedly at the four she saved from the Hydra. "You're in so much trouble," she declared, nodding assuredly.

"Thanks, Clarisse ..." grumbled Posie. "You sure know how to give a warm welcome to some guests."

They — both Clarisse and Posie — were tough stones to crack, yes; on the other hand, they didn't butt heads as badly as Percy and Clarisse did (though, that was nearly impossible given Clarisse tried to pummel Percy every chance she got, and Percy had no clue when to keep his mouth shut so Clarisse would slowly stop trying to make a pancake out of his face). But it irritated Posie how much of a front Clarisse put on for everyone and everything. She knew that she did, as well, but her front wasn't threatening to punch everyone in the face. That was Clarisse La Rue's front, to show just how formidable and mighty she was. Posie knew what Clarisse could be like when she didn't feel the need to broadcast that façade; she was a lot nicer when she wasn't acting so tough.

The four had just finished a tour of the CSS Birmingham, a tour that none of them particularly wanted, not even Clarisse, who was only doing it at the insistence of the ghostly captain of the boat. They were led through dark rooms that were overcrowded with dead sailors. They caught a glimpse of the coal bunker, the boilers, the engine room, where the large hunk of machinery huffed and groaned like it had been working nonstop for hundreds of years (not at all a promising sight, making Posie's stomach churn with anxiety as she watched it). They were led to the pilot house, the powder magazine, and the gunnery deck (which was Clarisse's favorite, of course) with two Dahlgren smoothbore cannons perched on the port and starboard sides, along with a Brooke nine-inch rifled gun fore and aft — all specially refitted to fire Celestial bronze cannonballs for all the Greek monsters that needed to be dealt with.

In truth, all of it sounded like a foreign language to Posie, going in one ear and out the other. All she could gather, Beckendorf would love all the machinery of the ship, closely analyzing every aspect he could, from the foundations of the iron ship to the Celestial bronze cannonballs; on the other hand, Lee would've hated it, perhaps that would have to do with all the ghosts floating around the place.

It was everywhere they went. Everywhere Posie looked, she spotted some ghostly apportion of some long-dead soldier — and those soldiers stared back, perhaps in anger she was in their way, or in anger she was alive, unlike them. Her skin crawled, unable to look at them for too long. As sad as the dead looked in the Underworld, these ghosts seemed incredibly bitter, with their facial features shimmering like ripples of water; anything that made them identifiable as a human was reduced to hazy and unrecognizable. Not a single one of the ghostly soldiers was dressed alike, not even were they all American soldiers — ancient Greek armor that was in tatters, men with chain mail hauberk over top bright-yellow fabrics covering the legs, or men with florid, colorful uniforms and flamboyant caps. They didn't speak, not to each other nor the newcomers, but Posie could feel their beady eyes wherever she stepped.

"They all look ... odd," remarked Percy, leaning over to whisper to her.

She shrugged. "I feel like I'm in social studies all over again," she agreed. "Like the teacher's about to make me point and say which time period each ghost came from."

Annabeth stepped in line with them. "That ghost," she pointed at one ghost dressed in the ornate, colorful armor, "used to be a Landsknecht."