Daughter of Wine

Hazel

Frank and I tumble over each other.  I accidentally give myself the Heimlich maneuver with the pommel of my sword and curl on the deck, moaning and coughing up the taste of katobleps poison.

Through a fog of pain, I hear Festus creaking in alarm and shooting fire.

Dimly, I wonder if we've hit an iceberg- but in the Ariatic, in the middle of summer?

The ship rocks to port with a massisve commotion, like telephone poles snapping in half. 

"Gahh!" Leo yells somewhere behind me. "It's eating the oars!"

What is? I wonder. I try to stand, but something large is pinning my legs. It's Frank, grumbling as he tries to extract himself from a pile of loose rope. 

Everyone else is scrambling. Jason jumps over us. his sword drawn, and races toward the stern. Piper is already on the quarterdeck, shooting food from her cornucopia and yeling "Hey! HEY! Eat this, ya stupid turtle!"

Turtle?

I see Calli is standing on the rail of the ship, waving her hand. The ship is rocking with the motion, and I realize that she's controlling the water. I didn't even know she could do that. 

Frank helps me to my feet. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I lie, clutching my stomach. "Go!"

Frank sprints up the steps, slinging off his backpack, which instantly transvorms into a bow and quiver. By the time he reaches the helm, he has already fired one arrow and is nocking the second. 

"Leo frantically works the ship's controls. "Oars won't retract! Get it away! Get it away!"

Up in the rigging, Nico's face is slack with shock.  "Styx, it's huge!" He yells. "Port! Go port!"

Coach Hedge is the last one on deck. He compensates for that with enthusiasm. He bounds up the steps, waving his baseball bat, and without hesitation goat-gallops to the stern and leaps over the rail with a gleeful "Ha-HA!"

I stagger toward the quarterdeck to join my friends. The boat shudders. More oars snap, and Leo yells, "No, no no! Dang slimy-shelled son of a mother!"

I reach the stern and can't believe what I see. 

When I heard the word turtle, I thought of a cute little thing the size of a jewelry box, sitting on a rock in the middle of a fishpond. When I heard huge, my mind tried to adjust. Okay, perhaps it's like the Galapagos tortoise I saw in the zoo once, with a shell big enough to ride on. 

I did not envision a creature the size of an island. When I see the massive dome of craggy black and brown squares, the word turtle simply does not compute. Its shell is more like a landmass, with hills of bone, shiny pearl valleys, kelp and moss forests, rivers of seawater trickling down the grooves of its carapace. The ocean around it is crashing and pushing against the shell, and I realize that Calli is trying to push it away, but the creature is much too massive. 

On the ship's starboard side, another part of the monster rises from the water like a submarine. 

Lares of Rome... is that its head?

Its gold eyes are the size of wading pools, with dark sideways slits for pupils. Its skin glistens like wet army camouflage, brown flecked with green and yellow. Its red, toothless mouth could swallow the Athena Parthenos in one bite. 

"Calli, eyes!" Jason yells. 

Calli gets the message and hops off the rail. She rushes to the quarterdeck and slams her thyrsus down loudly. She focuses in on the turtle, and immediately, the air around her becomes heavy and sweet and dizzying. Her eyes glow with a welcoming yet threatening purple fire that makes the hair on my arms stick straight up. She seems to have been getting more powerful, or she's been getting more practice. Either way, I get the feeling that if I looked directly in her eyes, I'd never be the same.