The Hidden Oracle: Chapters 21–29

“You know, she wrote the Sibylline Books—those prophecies that Ella the harpy memorized.”

“And the other three Oracles? I’m sure none of them was a beautiful young priestess whom you praised for her...what was it?...‘scintillating conversation’?”

In my dreams, I saw a crowned woman imploring me to find her Oracle.

I was hoping someone might write it down for posterity, but no one did.

Her gaze was more earnest than angry. “Apollo, you have to try. If we can get a glimpse of the future...well, it may be the only way to get things back to normal.”

Despite my fervor to rush into the woods and save my children, I had to proceed cautiously.

Sun gods are not good at sleeping during the day, but somehow I managed a fitful nap.

She had strapped a leather cuirass over her green dress and greaves over orange leggings, so she looked like a kindergartener reluctantly stuffed into combat gear by her parents.

He glanced at Meg, his eyes full of misgiving. I remembered that the son of Hades had his own ways of sensing the future—futures that involved the possibility of death.

The shell was the crushed carapace of a giant insect.

After another hour or so (surely the woods weren’t this big), the rain tapered off, leaving the ground steaming.

Then, up ahead, I heard a massive flushing sound—like water being forced through pipes...or fissures.

Was I reckless to rush toward such volatile nature gods?

From the waist up, he was perhaps twice the size of a human, with muscular arms the color of caldera mud, chalk-white eyes, and hair like cappuccino foam, as if he had shampooed vigorously and left it sudsy.

“O Great Palikos!” I said. “We beseech you—”

I’ll run through our spiel, and maybe you can advise me. Hi, I’m Pete. Welcome to the Woods at Camp Half-Blood! Would you be willing to take a short customer satisfaction survey after this encounter?

Pete looked crestfallen.

The three soldier ants advanced, their ten-foot-long antennae waving and bobbing in a mesmerizing way, trying to distract me from the true danger of their mandibles.

Each of their six legs would have made a fine construction winch.

In a panic, I threw my combat ukulele. It bounced off the ant’s forehead with a dissonant twang.

I gave it my utmost effort, channeling all the saccharine schmaltz I could muster from the 1970s.

“Then hear my solemn oath!”

“I swear that I will save Meg McCaffrey. I will use every means at my disposal to bring her safely from the ants’ lair, and this oath supersedes any previous oath I have made. This I swear upon your sacred and extremely hot waters!”

I remembered chasing her—her lilac scent on the breeze, her lithe form flitting through the dappled light of the forest.

Will’s expression reminded me very much of his mother, Naomi—that look of trepidation she got just before she went onstage.

But I had also sworn not to play music, and I had already broken that part of the oath in the most egregious, Neil-Diamondy way possible.

Perhaps Zeus was too taken aback to react, but I knew he would never overlook such an insult.

Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees—a hundred feet at least.

The creature dropped, its back legs twitching in death throes.

I began to sing again. Now, though, I had higher hopes of finding Meg, which made it difficult to summon the proper amount of melancholy.

The ants I encountered were no longer catatonic. They moved slowly and unsteadily, but they still attacked.

Her Majesty was three times the size of her largest soldiers—a towering mass of black chitin and barbed appendages, with diaphanous oval wings folded against her back.

I took some liberties with the lyrics. I may have changed angel to brood mother and woman to insect.

I got the feeling she had accepted my fealty and adopted us into her brood.

On the right side was an emaciated man with gray skin and white hair—no doubt the geyser god Paulie.

Rage and disgust fought in my throat, vying for the right to make me throw up.

He appeared to be no more than thirty, but it was a hard thirty, his face haggard and his belly distended from too much partying.

He appeared to be no more than thirty, but it was a hard thirty, his face haggard and his belly distended from too much partying.

“Even before Gaea commandeered the Doors of Death, souls escaped from Erebos all the time. It was quite easy for a god-emperor such as myself to call back my followers.”

I need you and Meg to open those gates. They’ve resisted my best efforts, but together you two can do it. Apollo, you have an affinity with Oracles. Meg has a way with trees.