𐌙/𐌍 Ᏽ𐌵𐌀𐌋𐌄 & 𐌕𐋅𐌄 Ᏽ𐌐𐌄𐌀𐌕 𐌌𐌙𐌕𐋅𐌔 ¹

Chapter 5

Five
𖧷

Changes. But For Worse–Way Worse

  Ever come home and found your room messed up? Like some helpful person has tried to "clean" it, and suddenly you can’t find anything? And even if nothing is missing, you get that creepy feeling like somebody’s been looking through your private stuff and dusting everything with mango furniture polish? (Which, by the way, is the cheap and bad smelling one)

  That’s kind of the way I felt seeing Camp Half-Blood again.

  On the surface, things didn’t look all that different. The Big House was still there with its blue gabled roof and its wraparound porch. The strawberry fields still baked in the sun. The same white-columned Greek buildings were scattered around the valley—the amphitheater, the combat arena, the dining pavilion overlooking Long Island Sound. And nestled between the woods and the creek were the same cabins—a crazy assortment of twelve buildings, each representing a different Olympian god.

  But there was an air of danger now. You could tell something was wrong. Instead of playing volleyball in the sandpit, counselors and satyrs were stockpiling weapons in the tool shed. Dryads armed with bows and arrows talked nervously at the edge of the woods. The forest looked sickly, the grass in the meadow was pale yellow, and the fire marks on Half-Blood Hill stood out like ugly scars.

  Somebody had messed with my favorite place in the world, and I was not ... well, let's just say, I wasn't really on board with it.

  As we made our way to the Big House, I recognized a lot of kids from last summer. Nobody stopped to talk, which was weird for the Apollo cabin, who everytime any of them saw me was like they were meeting a celebrity. Nobody said, “Welcome back.” Some did double takes when they saw Tyson, but most just walked grimly past and carried on with their duties–running messages, toting swords to sharpen on the grinding wheels. The camp felt like a military school. And believe me, I know. I’ve been kicked out of a couple after being adopted by some “not-so-accepting-people.”

  None of that mattered to Tyson. He was absolutely fascinated by everything he saw. "Whasthat!" he
gasped.

  "The stables with pegasi," I said. "You know, flying horses."

  "Whasthat!"

  "Um ... those are just the toilets?"

  "Whasthat!"

  "The cabins. If they don’t know who your Olympian parent is, they put you in the Hermes one–that old one over there–until you’re determined. Then, once they know, they'll put you in your dad or mom’s group, with your siblings."

  He looked at Percy in awe. "You ... have a cabin?"

  "Number three." He pointed to the low gray building made purely of sea stone.

  "You live with friends in the cabin?"

  "No. No, just me."

  I don't think that Percy was really in the mood for telling Tyson that he was, for short, not supposed to be alive, and that both his uncles had tried to kill him in many ways because of that. Family business sure are a wonderful thing, huh?