Lightning Child - Percy Jackson

004

I glanced over at Percy. His jaw was clenched as if he was holding back from sucker-punching Mr D in the lip. Mr. D kept grumbling.

"'Be a better influence on kids,' Ha! Absolutely unfair."  He was on a rant about his father now, punishing him for being with a wood nymph. What the hell is a wood nymph? 

Thunder rumbled in the distance.

"And..." Percy stammered, "Your father is..." 

"Zeus, of course"

He's Dionysus? This thin, scruffy man is a god? I glanced at Percy again, who was still piecing it together.

"The D, it's for Dionysus," I pointed out. "Right?"

Mr. D rolled his eyes. "What do they say these days, Grover? Do the children say, 'Well, duh!?"

"Y-yes, Mr. D." 

"Then, 'Well duh!?' What did you think I was Aphrodite?"

I shrugged. "I thought you were 'special'" Grover ducked his head down, hiding a grin, 

"I am. That's the whole point of being a god"

"A god. You." Percy quipped

Mr D turned to him, and he glared at Percy so hard it seemed like he was looking through his soul. Chiron sighed while we watched them...

Mr D sat back. "Would you like to test me, child?" 

"No, sir"

"Come now, children," Chiron finally said; I thought the man was going to stay in the wheelchair, but the most peculiar thing happened, he rose from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it.

His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle, and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic because there was no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached.

I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a large black stallion. But where its neck should be was the upper body of an old balding man

"What a relief," the centaur said. "I'd been cooped up in there so long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, follow me. Let's meet the other campers."