From Eden • Percy Jackson

1.3

MY DINNER GOES UP IN SMOKE
🌊🦚

Word of the bathroom incident spread immediately. Wherever I went, campers pointed at me and murmured something about toilet water. Or maybe they were just staring at Annabeth, who was still pretty much dripping wet.

Eden showed me a few more places: the metal shop (where kids were forging their own swords), the arts- and-crafts room (where satyrs were sandblasting a giant marble statue of a goat-man), and the climbing wall, which actually consisted of two facing walls that shook violently, dropped boulders, sprayed lava, and clashed together if you didn't get to the top fast enough.

Finally we returned to the canoeing lake, where the trail led back to the cabins.
"I've got training to do," Annabeth said flatly. "Dinner's at seven-thirty. Just follow your cabin to the mess hall."
"Annabeth, I'm sorry about the toilets."
"Whatever."
"It wasn't my fault."
She looked at me skeptically, and I realized it was my fault. I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.

"You need to talk to the Oracle," Annabeth said.
"Who?"
"Not who. What. The Oracle. I'll ask Chiron."
I stared into the lake as Annabeth stomped away, wishing somebody would give me a straight answer for once.

I wasn't expecting anybody to be looking back at me from the bottom, so my heart skipped a beat when I noticed two teenage girls sitting cross-legged at the base of the pier, about twenty feet below. They wore blue jeans and shim-mering green T-shirts, and their brown hair floated loose around their shoulders as minnows darted in and out. They smiled and waved as if I were a long-lost friend.
I didn't know what else to do. I waved back.

"Don't encourage them," Eden warned. "Naiads are terrible flirts."
"Naiads," I repeated, feeling completely overwhelmed. "That's it. I want to go home now."
Eden frowned. "You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us."
"You mean, mentally disturbed kids?"
"I mean not human. Not totally human, anyway. Half-human."
"Half-human and half-what?"
"I think you know."

I didn't want to admit it, but I was afraid I did. I felt a tingling in my limbs, a sensation I sometimes felt when my mom talked about my dad.
"God," I said. "Half-god."
Eden nodded. "Your father isn't dead, Perseus. He's one of the Olympians."
"That's ... crazy."
"Is it? What's the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they've changed their habits in the last few millennia?"
"But those are just-" I almost said myths again. Then I remembered Chiron's warning that in two thousand years, I might be considered a myth. "But if all the kids here are half-gods-"
"Demigods," Eden said. "That's the official term. Or half-bloods."
"Then who's your dad?"
Her hands tightened around the pier railing. I got the feeling I'd just trespassed on a sensitive subject.
"I don't have a dad," she said. "Not technically."
"What does that mean."
"I had two moms."
"Oh... had? And that's totally cool with me just so you know."
"That's not funny, Perseus. And yes, had. My mortal mother died a long time ago."
"I'm sorry, I didn't know."
"It's okay. I don't even remember her."
"So who's your godly parent then?"
"Cabin two."
"Meaning Hera? I thought she was a maiden goddess?"
Eden straightened. "She is."
I got the feeling that she would not be elaborating at this time. Okay, I thought. Why not?
"And my dad?"
"Undetermined," Eden said, "like I told you before. Nobody knows."
"Except my mother. She knew."
"Maybe not, Perseus. Gods don't always reveal their identities."
"My dad would have. He loved her."

Eden gave me a cautious look. She didn't want to burst my bubble. "Maybe you're right. Maybe he'll send a sign. That's the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens."
"You mean sometimes it doesn't?"
Eden ran her palm along the rail. "The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don't always ... Well, sometimes they don't care about their children, Perseus. They ignore them."