The New Trinity -- Percy Jackson Batman Crossover -- The Olympian Heroes Book 4

21. Percy

“N-no, milady!” Janus’s right face stammered.
“Yes!” the left face said.
“Shut up!” the right face said.
“Excuse me?” the woman asked.
“Not you, milady! I was talking to myself.”
“I see,” the lady said. “You know very well your visit is premature. The
girl’s time has not yet come. So I give you a choice: leave these heroes to me,
or I shall turn you into a door and break you down.”
“What kind of door?” the left face asked.
“Shut up!” the right face said.
“Because French doors are nice,” the left face mused. “Lots of natural
light.”
“Shut up!” the right face wailed. “Not you, milady! Of course I’ll leave. I
was just having a bit of fun. Doing my job. Offering choices.”
“Causing indecision,” the woman corrected. “Now be gone!”
The left face muttered, “Party power,” then he raised his silver key,
inserted it into the air, and disappeared.
The woman turned toward us, and fear closed around my heart. Her eyes
shined with power. Leave these heroes to me. That didn’t sound good. For a
second, I almost wished we could’ve taken our chances with Janus. But then
the woman smiled.
“You must be hungry,” she said. “Sit with me and talk.”
She waved her hand, and the old Roman fountain began to flow. Jets of
clear water sprayed into the air. A marble table appeared, laden with platters
of sandwiches and pitchers of lemonade.
“Who…who are you?” I asked.
“I am Hera.” The woman smiled. “Queen of Heaven.”
I’d seen Hera once before at a Council of the Gods, but I hadn’t paid
much attention to her. At the time I’d been surrounded by a bunch of other gods who were debating whether or not to kill me.
I didn’t remember her looking so normal. Of course, gods are usually
twenty feet tall when they’re on Olympus, so that makes them look a lot less normal. But now, Hera looked like a regular mom.
She served us sandwiches and poured lemonade.
“Grover, dear,” she said, “use your napkin. Don’t eat it.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grover said.
“Tyson, you’re wasting away. Would you like another peanut butter
sandwich?”
Tyson stifled a belch. “Yes, nice lady.”
“Queen Hera,” Annabeth said. “I can’t believe it. What are you doing in
the Labyrinth?”
Hera smiled. She flicked one finger and Annabeth’s hair combed itself.
All the dirt and grime disappeared from her face.
“I came to see you, naturally,” the goddess said.
Grover and I exchanged nervous looks. Usually when the gods come
looking for you, it’s not out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s because they want something.
Still, that didn’t keep me from chowing down on turkey-and-Swiss
sandwiches and chips and lemonade. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was.
Tyson was inhaling one peanut butter sandwich after another, and Grover
was loving the lemonade, crunching the Styrofoam cup like an ice-cream
cone.
“I didn’t think-” Annabeth faltered. “Well, I didn’t think you liked
heroes.”
Hera smiled indulgently. “Because of that little spat I had with Hercules?
Honestly, I got so much bad press because of one disagreement.”
“Didn’t you try to kill him, like, a lot of times?” Annabeth asked.
Hera waved her hand dismissively. “Water under the bridge, my dear.
Besides, he was one of my loving husband’s children by another woman.
My patience wore thin, I’ll admit it. But Zeus and I have had some excellent marriage counseling sessions since then. We’ve aired our feelings and come to an understanding, especially after that last little incident.”
“You mean when he sired Thalia?” I guessed, but immediately wished I
hadn’t. As soon as I said the name of our friend, the half-blood daughter of Zeus, Hera’s eyes turned toward me frostily.
“Percy Jackson, isn’t it? One of Poseidon’s…children.” I got the feeling she was thinking of another word besides children. “As I recall, I voted to let you live at the winter solstice. I hope I voted correctly.”
She turned back to Annabeth with a sunny smile. “At any rate, I certainly
bear you no ill will, my girl. I appreciate the difficulty of your quest. Especially when you have troublemakers like Janus to deal with.”
Annabeth lowered her gaze. “Why was he here? He was driving me
crazy.”
“Trying to,” Hera agreed. “You must understand, the minor gods like
Janus have always been frustrated by the small parts they play in the
universe. Some, I fear, have little love for Olympus, and could easily be
swayed to support the rise of my father.”
“Your father?” I said. “Oh, right.”
I’d forgotten that Kronos was Hera’s dad, too, along with being the father
to Zeus, Poseidon, and all the eldest Olympians. I guess that made Kronos my grandfather, but that thought was so weird I put it out of my mind.
“We must watch the minor gods,” Hera said. “Janus. Hecate. Morpheus. They give lip service to Olympus, and yet-”
“That’s where Dionysus went,” I remembered. “He was checking on the minor gods.”
“Indeed.” Hera stared at the fading mosaics of the Olympians. “You see,
in times of trouble, even gods can lose faith. They start putting their trust in the wrong things. They stop looking at the big picture and start being selfish. But I’m the goddess of marriage, you see. I’m used to perseverance. You
have to rise above the squabbling and chaos, and keep believing. You have
to always keep your goals in mind.”
“What are your goals?” Annabeth asked.
She smiled. “To keep my family, the Olympians, together, of course. At
the moment, the best way I can do that is by helping you. Zeus does not
allow me to interfere much, I am afraid. But once every century or so, for a quest I care deeply about, he allows me to grant a wish.”
“A wish?”
“Before you ask it, let me give you some advice, which I can do for free. I know you see Daedalus. His Labyrinth is as much a mystery to me as it is to
you. But if you want to know his fate, I would visit my son Hephaestus at
his forge. Daedalus was a great inventor, a mortal after Hephaestus’s heart. There has never been a mortal Hephaestus admired more. If anyone would have kept up with Daedalus and could tell you his fate, it is Hephaestus.”
“But how do we get there?” Annabeth asked. “That’s my wish. I want a
way to navigate the Labyrinth.”
Hera looked disappointed. “So be it. You wish for something, however,
that you have already been given.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The means is already within your grasp.” She looked at me. “Percy
knows the answer.”
“I do?”
“But that’s not fair,” Annabeth said. “You’re not telling me what it is!”
Hera shook her head. “Getting something and having the wits to use it…those are two different things. I’m sure your mother Athena would
agree.”
The room rumbled like distant thunder. Hera stood. “That would be my cue. Zeus grows impatient. Think on what I have said, Annabeth. Seek out Hephaestus. You will have to pass through the ranch, I imagine. But keep going. And use all the means at your disposal, however common they may seem.”
She pointed toward the two doors and they melted away, revealing twin
corridors, open and dark. “One last thing, Annabeth. I have postponed your day of choice, I have not prevented it. Soon, as Janus said, you will have to make a decision. Farewell!”
She waved a hand and turned into white smoke. So did the food, just as
Tyson chomped down on a sandwich that turned to mist in his mouth. The
fountain trickled to a stop. The mosaic walls dimmed and turned grungy and faded again. The room was no longer any place you’d want to have a picnic.
Annabeth stamped her foot. “What sort of help was that? ‘Here, have a
sandwich. Make a wish. Oops, I can’t help you!’ Poof!”
“Poof,” Tyson agreed sadly, looking at his empty plate.
“Well,” Grover sighed, “she said Percy knows the answer. That’s
something.”
They all looked at me.
“But I don’t,” I said. “I don’t know what she was talking about.”
Annabeth sighed. “All right. Then we’ll just keep going.”
“Which way?” I asked. I really wanted to ask what Hera had meant—
about the choice Annabeth needed to make. But then Grove and Tyson both tensed. They stood up together like they’d rehearsed it. “Left,” they both
said.
Annabeth frowned. “How can you be sure?”
“Because something is coming from the right,” Grover said.
“Something big,” Tyson agreed. “In a hurry.”
“Left is sounding pretty good,” I decided. Together we plunged into the dark corridor.