Riptide by Annabeth Chase

Chapter Six: Field Trip

(Five years later - The Lightning Thief pg 56)

Normally when spending the night on Olympus my sleep was not interrupted by dreams but as would soon become obvious things were changing. My dream started on the beach I loved to sit on. It'd gotten better at controlling my nightmares and could usually at least start them by sitting on the pier or walking along the shore. The random spider lady liked to lurk in the shadows but usually I could just ignore her.

However, this time she stood behind me chattering and whispering. Things are changing my brave one, she rasped. Soon you will find me far too powerful to ignore.

I kept my gaze firmly fixed on the horizon no matter what I heard. I knew turning around and confronting her wouldn't help. Usually if I did that, she would just burst into a million spiders, and I would wake up screaming.

Ancient things have started to stir, she whispered in my ear. Why don't I give you a reminder of my power.

As she said this my dream shifted to a memory. I was sitting in my kindergarten classroom listening to my teacher as she read a book to the class. It was some sort of supremely boring book that is written for children about numbers or something. I had been trying to read a book about Roman columns, but it had been taken from me and my teacher told me I would have to skip recess. I was supposed to be listening to the book she was reading instead of reading my own. I didn't really understand why I would get in trouble for reading when she called it reading time, but I got in trouble for that a lot. Today I had managed to read a whole chapter and get through half of the 'reading time' before I got caught so it was a personal best!

I was lazily drawing pictures in the carpet texture when there was a sudden sharp pain in my calf. I screamed loudly and kicked hard seeing something large get flung away from me. Unfortunately, small children don't really have the best panic response and soon everyone else was screaming and running around. I was writhing around in the most pain I had ever experienced.

By that point in my life, I had enough experience with spiders to know I had been bitten. I was trying to gain control over my senses and ignore the pain to make sure I was out of danger. When I was able to look around I saw the spider on the carpet raising his front legs in an aggressive manner and determined I was clearly not out of danger. It was a large spider with its main body about the size of a quarter. It was mostly brown with some specific black markings and bright red hairs around its chelicerae. I had seen a spider like this in a book once and realized that not only was I still in danger; I was probably in more danger than I had ever been in before.

If this Brazilian Wandering Spider managed to bite me a second time I was definitely going to die. I knew that this type of spider was not native to the United States and rarely bites twice but there are few limits to how far a spider will go to destroy a child of Athena. It was a relatively small specimen but unfortunately, I was also a small specimen so I doubted that would be very helpful.

As it got ready to pounce on me again one of my classmates stepped on it, probably unintentionally since everyone was still running around like crazy, but either way I was no longer in danger of being bitten twice. I was however, still in pain and in danger of dying from the first bite. Considering it was probably the largest spider my teacher had ever seen, and I was lying on the ground in agony, I wasn't surprised when she picked me up and started to leave without planning or preparing anything.

"We have to bring the spider," I managed to tell her before we left, "It's a Brazilian Wandering Spider, the hospital will need to confirm that."

She seemed a little confused at first and then realized I was right. We'd need to show the emergency staff what had envenomed me if they were going to be able to administer the correct anti-venom. She picked up the spider in a paper towel, grabbed a nearby teacher to take care of her class, and rushed me to the hospital.