The Hidden Oracle
“Finally,” Chiron said, “we welcome a new demigod to camp—Meg McCaffrey!”
She wiped her mouth and stood.
Next to her, Alice Miyazawa said, “Stand up, Meg.”
Julia Feingold laughed.
At the Ares table, Sherman Yang rose. “Now this one—this one deserves a special welcome. What do you think, Connor?”
Connor reached into his backpack. “I think maybe the canoe lake.”
I started to say, “Meg—”
Then all Hades broke loose.
Sherman Yang strode toward Meg. Connor Stoll pulled out a golden net and threw it over her head. Meg yelped and tried to squirm free, while some of the campers chanted, “Dunk—her! Dunk—her!” Chiron did his best to shout them down: “Now, demigods, wait a moment!”
A guttural howl interrupted the proceedings. From the top of the colonnade, a blur of chubby flesh, leafy wings, and linen diaper hurtled downward and landed on Sherman Yang’s back, knocking him face-first into the stone floor. Peaches the karpos stood and wailed, beating his chest. His eyes glowed green with anger. He launched himself at Connor Stoll, locked his plump legs around the demigod’s neck, and began pulling out Connor’s hair with his claws.
“Get it off!” Connor wailed, thrashing blindly around the pavilion. “Get it off!”
Slowly the other demigods overcame their shock. Several drew swords.
“C’è un karpos!” yelled the Italian girl.
“Kill it!” said Alice Miyazawa.
“No!” I cried.
Normally such a command from me would’ve initiated a prison lockdown situation, with all the mortals dropping to their bellies to await my further orders. Alas, now I was a mere mortal with a squeaky adolescent voice.
I watched in horror as my own daughter Kayla nocked an arrow in her bow.
“Peaches, get off him!” Meg screamed. She untangled herself from the net, threw it down, then ran toward Connor.
The karpos hopped off Connor’s neck. He landed at Meg’s feet, baring his fangs and hissing at the other campers who had formed a loose semicircle with weapons drawn.
“Meg, get out of the way,” said Nico di Angelo. “That thing is dangerous.”
“No!” Meg’s voice was shrill. “Don’t kill him!”
Sherman Yang rolled over, groaning. His face looked worse than it probably was—a gash on the forehead can produce a shocking amount of blood—but the sight steeled the resolve of the other campers. Kayla drew her bow. Julia Feingold unsheathed a dagger.
“Wait!” I pleaded.
What happened next, a lesser mind could never have processed.
Julia charged. Kayla shot her arrow.
Meg thrust out her hands and faint gold light flashed between her fingers. Suddenly young McCaffrey was holding two swords—each a curved blade in the old Thracian style, siccae made from Imperial gold. I had not seen such weapons since the fall of the Rome. They seemed to have appeared from nowhere, but my long experience with magic items told me they must have been summoned from the crescent rings Meg always wore.
Both her blades whirled. Meg simultaneously sliced Kayla’s arrow out of the air and disarmed Julia, sending her dagger skittering across the floor.
“What the Hades?” Connor demanded. His hair had been pulled out in chunks so he looked like an abused doll. “Who is this kid?”
Peaches crouched at Meg’s side, snarling, as Meg fended off the confused and enraged demigods with her two swords.
My vision must have been better than the average mortal’s, because I saw the glowing sign first—a light shining above Meg’s head.
When I recognized the symbol, my heart turned to lead. I hated what I saw, but I thought I should point it out. “Look.”
The others seemed confused. Then the glow became brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.
A boy in the crowd gasped. “She’s a communist!”
A girl who’d been sitting at Cabin Four’s table gave him a disgusted sneer. “No, Damien, that’s my mom’s symbol.” Her face went slack as the truth sank in. “Uh, which means…it’s her mom’s symbol.”
My head spun. I did not want this knowledge. I did not want to serve a demigod with Meg’s parentage. But now I understood the crescents on Meg’s rings. They were not moons; they were sickle blades. As the only Olympian present, I felt I should make her title official.
“My friend is no longer unclaimed,” I announced.
The other demigods knelt in respect, some more reluctantly than others.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I said, my voice as bitter as Chiron’s tea, “please give it up for Meg McCaffrey, daughter of Demeter.”
You’ve got to be kid—
Well, crud, what just happened there?
I ran out of syl—
NO ONE KNEW WHAT TO MAKE OF MEG.
I couldn’t blame them.
The girl made even less sense to me now that I knew who her mother was.
I’d had my suspicions, yes, but I’d hoped to be proven wrong. Being right so much of the time was a terrible burden.
Why would I dread a child of Demeter?