A child of the night

1. A goat smashes my window

Marty's POV
Introduction

The only thing worse than being woken up by your alarm is being woken up by a human-goat hybrid launching them self through your bedroom window at four o'clock in the morning.

Lets start at the beginning. My name is Marty Valkyrie, I am 15 years of age and I live in a Hostel for Homeless Children. Before you ask, I don't remember much of my life before my teenage years, everything's a little fuzzy. Living on the streets does that to you after a while. I found the orphanage last year and I have been staying there since then. Nothing really exciting happens and I don't really have any friends. I guess that's why the goat boy persuaded me to leave so easily.

Anyway, my life has been kinda messed up since then, and I just want to warn you:

If you don't believe in the Greek Gods, monsters that turn to dust when you kill them, satyrs, nymphs, naiads, demigods and all the other creatures from Greek mythology, then you can just imagine this book as fiction. To you, it can be just fun stories about imaginary people in an alternate world. To you, none of this is reality. To you, this story isn't true. And it's probably safer for your sanity to keep it that way. Trust me, I know.

That was just a friendly warning, because if you let these thing inside your head there's no escaping the truth.

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The dawn light filtered through the branches of the old oak outside Marty's bedroom window, casting dappled shadows onto the carpet. She lay on her bunk in a half conscious state and tried to drift back into a light sleep. Marty was aware of the snores of the other children in the dorm around her and the occasional pattering of something hitting the window. Perhaps it was raining. She sighed and glanced at the clock on her bedside table. 3:47am. It was way too early to go down to breakfast, but she couldn't seem to drift off either.

After closing her eyes for the hundredth time she finally felt the grasp of sleep overtake her. That was when the goat scissor kicked her window so hard it smashed into a million pieces. Sleep was out of the question. Marty sat bolt upright and stared agape at the young ...boy? who sat in an untidy heap at the foot of her bed. He picked a piece of broken glass from his hair and looked up at her apologetically.

"Sorry, I need to work on my entrance"

She blinked. He was an African-American boy from the waist up and had short, black, curly hair. A set of reed panpipes hung by a string around his neck, along with a necklace threaded with three colourful beads. The orange t-shirt he was wearing was decorated with the initials: CHB. They were the remotely normal things about him. From the waist down his legs were covered in shaggy brown fur and there were two cloven hooves where his feet should have been.

The boy stood up, dusted himself off and held out a hand in greeting.

"Hi, my name's Eric."

Marty didn't shake his hand. She stared at him for a few seconds, unsure of what to think or say.

"You're...you're a goat." She managed.

"A satyr actually" he corrected her, "and if you can see through the mist it means I've found the right person!" He grinned "It took forever to track you down, you smell weird for a demigod"

Okay, it took a lot to surprise Marty. Heck, she'd lived alone on the streets all her life and had to deal with everything the world threw at her. But if a satyr came crashing through your window in the middle of the night, corrected your grammar, told you that you stink and then called you a word that you didn't know the meaning of, I think you'd be slightly shocked.

Marty glowered at Eric "First of all, I don't smell. And second, what did you just call me? A demigod?"

But Eric wasn't listening. He used his hooves to sweep the shards of broken glass under the bed and rubbed his hands together in a business like manner. "I'll explain on the way, I'm taking you to Camp Half-Blood"

Marty tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and gave the satyr a funny look. Was this stranger really expecting her to just drop everything and follow him to a mythical camp that probably didn't even exist? She looked around at the dingy room that was her home, then back at Eric. He smiled at her expectantly. She shrugged, "Sure, what have I got to lose?"

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It only took a couple of minutes for Marty to get ready. She grabbed her toothbrush and her hairbrush from the bathroom, and threw on a faded purple t-shirt and black leggings. After tying her silky black hair into two bunches she joined Eric by the windowsill.

"Got everything you need?" He asked.

Marty laughed nervously "Not a clue! I don't even know what's going on. I'll probably wake up soon and there will be no evidence of a satyr or a smashed window"

"Keep telling yourself that."

And on that high note, they climbed out of the window and into the night.