~ { Shadow and Beauty } ~

Dolphin Men

{Percy}

Percy was not feeling the love.

   Bad enough he'd been run out of Atlanta by evil sea gods. Then he had failed to stop a giant shrimp attack on the Argo II. Then the ichthyocentaurs, Chiron's brothers, hadn't even wanted to meet him.

   After all that, they had arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, and Percy had to stay aboard ship while Jason the Big Shot visited his half brother. Hercules, the most famous demigod of all time, and Percy didn't get to meet him either.

   Okay, sure, from what Piper said afterward, Hercules was a jerk, but still... Percy was getting kind of tired of staying aboard ship and pacing the deck. The open sea was supposed to be his territory. Percy was supposed to step up, take charge, and keep everybody safe. Instead, all the way across the Atlantic, he'd done pretty much nothing except make small talk with sharks and listen to Coach Hedge sing TV theme songs.

   To make matters worse, Annabeth had been distant ever since they had left Charleston. She spent most of her time in her cabin, studying the bronze map she'd retrieved from Fort Sumter, or looking up information on Daedalus's laptop.

   Whenever Percy stopped by to see her, she was so lost in thought that the conversation went something like this:

   Percy: "Hey, how's it going?"
   Annabeth: "Uh, no thanks."

   Percy: "Okay... have you eaten anything today?"
   Annabeth: "I think Leo is on duty. Ask him."

   Percy: "So, my hair is on fire."
   Annabeth: "Okay. In a while."

   She got like this sometimes. It was one of the challenges of dating an Athena girl. Still, Percy wondered what he had to do to get her attention. He was worried about her after her encounter with the spiders at Fort Sumter, and he didn't know how to help her, especially if she shut him out.

   After leaving the Pillars of Hercules—unscathed except for a few coconuts lodged in the hull's bronze plating—the ship traveled by air for a few hundred miles. Percy hoped the ancient lands wouldn't be as bad as they'd heard. But it was almost like a commercial: You'll notice the difference immediately!

   Several times an hour, something attacked the ship. A flock of flesh-eating Stymphalian birds swooped out of the night sky, and Festus torched them. Storm spirits swirled around the mast, and Jason blasted them with lightning.

   While Coach Hedge was having dinner on the foredeck, a wild pegasus appeared from nowhere, stampeded over the coach's enchiladas, and flew off again, leaving cheesy hoof prints all across the deck.

   "What was that for?" the coach demanded.

   The sight of the pegasus made Percy wish Blackjack were here. He hadn't seen his friend in days. Tempest and Arion also hadn't shown themselves. Maybe they didn't want to venture into the Mediterranean. If so, Percy couldn't blame them.

   Finally around midnight, after the ninth or tenth aerial attack, Jason turned to him. "How about you get some sleep? I'll keep blasting stuff out of the sky as long as I can. Then we can go by sea for a while, and you can take point."

   Percy wasn't sure that he'd be able to sleep with the boat rocking through the clouds as it was shaken by angry wind spirits, but Jason's idea made sense. He went below decks and crashed on his bunk.

   His nightmares, of course, were anything but restful.

 
He dreamed he was in a dark cavern. He could only see a few feet in front of him, but the space must have been vast. Water dripped from somewhere nearby, and the sound echoed off distant walls. The way the air moved made Percy suspect the cave's ceiling was far, far above.