The Mark of Athena - VII Leo

WHO IS AUNT ROSA?” HAZEL ASKED.
Leo didn’t want to talk about her. Nemesis’s words were still buzzing in his ears. His tool belt seemed heavier since he’d put the cookie in there—which was impossible. Its pockets could carry anything without adding extra weight. Even the most fragile things would never break. Still, Leo imagined he could feel it in there, dragging him down, waiting to be cracked open.
“Long story,” he said. “She abandoned me after my mom died, gave me to foster care.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well…” Leo was anxious to change the subject. “What about you? What Nemesis said about your brother?”
Hazel blinked like she’d gotten salt in her eyes. “Nico…he found me in the Underworld. He brought me back to the mortal world and convinced the Romans at Camp Jupiter to accept me. I owe him for my second chance at life. If Nemesis is right, and Nico’s in danger…I have to help him.”
“Sure,” Leo said, though the idea made him uneasy. He doubted the revenge goddess ever gave advice out of the goodness of her heart. “And what Nemesis said about your brother having six days to live, and Rome getting destroyed…any idea what she meant?”
“None,” Hazel admitted. “But I’m afraid…”
Whatever she was thinking, she decided not to share it. She climbed one of the largest boulders to get a better view. Leo tried to follow and lost his balance. Hazel caught his hand. She pulled him up and they found themselves atop the rock, holding hands, face-to-face.
Hazel’s eyes glittered like gold.
Gold is easy, she’d said. It didn’t seem that way to Leo—not when he looked at her. He wondered who Sammy was. Leo had a nagging suspicion that he should know, but he just couldn’t place the name. Whoever he was, he was lucky if Hazel cared for him.
“Um, thanks.” He let go of her hand, but they were still standing so close, he could feel the warmth of her breath. She definitely didn’t seem like a dead person.
“When we were talking to Nemesis,” Hazel said uneasily, “your hands…I saw flames.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s a Hephaestus power. Usually I can keep it under control.”
“Oh.” She put one hand protectively on her denim shirt, like she was about to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Leo got the feeling she wanted to back away from him, but the boulder was too small.
Great, he thought. Another person who thinks I’m a scary freak.
He gazed across the island. The opposite shore was only a few hundred yards away. Between here and there were dunes and clumps of boulders, but nothing that looked like a reflecting pool.
You will always be the outsider, Nemesis had told him, the seventh wheel. You will not find a place among your brethren.
She might as well have poured acid in his ears. Leo didn’t need anybody to tell him he was odd man out. He’d spent months alone in Bunker 9 at Camp Half-Blood, working on his ship while his friends trained together and shared meals and played capture-the-flag for fun and prizes. Even his two best friends, Piper and Jason, often treated him like an outsider. Since they’d started dating, their idea of “quality time” didn’t include Leo. His only other friend, Festus the dragon, had been reduced to a figurehead when his control disk had gotten destroyed on their last adventure. Leo didn’t have the technical skill to repair it.
The seventh wheel. Leo had heard of a fifth wheel—an extra, useless piece of equipment. He figured a seventh wheel was worse.
He’d thought maybe this quest would be a fresh start for him. All his hard work on the Argo II would pay off. He’d have six good friends who would admire and appreciate him, and they’d go sailing off into the sunrise to fight giants. Maybe, Leo secretly hoped, he’d even find a girlfriend.
Do the math, he chided himself.
Nemesis was right. He might be part of a group of seven, but he was still isolated. He had fired on the Romans and brought his friends nothing but trouble. You will not find a place among your brethren.
“Leo?” Hazel asked gently. “You can’t take what Nemesis said to heart.”
He frowned. “What if it’s true?”
“She’s the goddess of revenge,” Hazel reminded him. “Maybe she’s on our side, maybe not; but she exists to stir up resentment.”
Leo wished he could dismiss his feelings that easily. He couldn’t. Still, it wasn’t Hazel’s fault.
“We should keep going,” he said. “I wonder what Nemesis meant about finishing before dark.”
Hazel glanced at the sun, which was just touching the horizon. “And who is the cursed boy she mentioned?”
Below them, a voice said, “Cursed boy she mentioned.”
At first, Leo saw no one. Then his eyes adjusted. He realized a young woman was standing only ten feet from the base of the boulder. Her dress was a Greek-style tunic the same color as the rocks. Her wispy hair was somewhere between brown and blond and gray, so it blended with the dry grass. She wasn’t invisible, exactly, but she was almost perfectly camouflaged until she moved. Even then, Leo had trouble focusing on her. Her face was pretty but not memorable. In fact, each time Leo blinked, he couldn’t remember what she looked like, and he had to concentrate to find her again.
“Hello,” Hazel said. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” the girl answered. Her voice sounded weary, like she was tired of answering that question.
Hazel and Leo exchanged looks. With this demigod gig, you never knew what you’d run into. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t good. A ninja girl camouflaged in earth tones didn’t strike Leo as something he wanted to deal with just then.
“Are you the cursed kid Nemesis mentioned?” Leo asked. “But you’re a girl.”
“You’re a girl,” said the girl.
“Excuse me?” Leo said.
“Excuse me,” the girl said miserably.
“You’re repeating…” Leo stopped. “Oh. Hold it. Hazel, wasn’t there some myth about a girl who repeated everything—?”
“Echo,” Hazel said.
“Echo,” the girl agreed. She shifted, her dress changing with the landscape. Her eyes were the color of the salt water. Leo tried to home in on her features, but he couldn’t.
“I don’t remember the myth,” he admitted. “You were cursed to repeat the last thing you heard?”
“You heard,” Echo said.
“Poor thing,” Hazel said. “If I remember right, a goddess did this?”
“A goddess did this,” Echo confirmed.
Leo scratched his head. “But wasn’t that thousands of years…oh. You’re one of the mortals who came back through the Doors of Death. I really wish we could stop running into dead people.”
“Dead people,” Echo said, like she was chastising him.
He realized Hazel was staring at her feet.
“Uh…sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“That way.” Echo pointed toward the far shore of the island.
“You want to show us something?” Hazel asked. She climbed down the boulder, and Leo followed.
Even up close, Echo was hard to see. In fact, she seemed to get more invisible the longer he looked at her.
“You sure you’re real?” he asked. “I mean…flesh and blood?”
“Flesh and blood.” She touched Leo’s face and made him flinch. Her fingers were warm.
“So…you have to repeat everything?” he asked.
“Everything.”
Leo couldn’t help smiling. “That could be fun.”
“Fun,” she said unhappily.
“Blue elephants.”
“Blue elephants.”
“Kiss me, you fool.”
“You fool.”
“Hey!”
“Hey!”
“Leo,” Hazel pleaded, “don’t tease her.”
“Don’t tease her,” Echo agreed.
“Okay, okay,” Leo said, though he had to resist the urge. It wasn’t every day he met somebody with a built-in talkback feature. “So what were you pointing at? Do you need our help?”
“Help,” Echo agreed emphatically. She gestured for them to follow and sprinted down the slope. Leo could only follow her progress by the movement of the grass and the shimmer of her dress as it changed to match the rocks.
“We’d better hurry,” Hazel said. “Or we’ll lose her.”
They found the problem—if you can call a mob of good-looking girls a problem. Echo led them down into a grassy meadow shaped like a blast crater, with a small pond in the middle. Gathered at the water’s edge were several dozen nymphs. At least, Leo guessed they were nymphs. Like the ones at Camp Half-Blood, these wore gossamer dresses. Their feet were bare. They had elfish features, and their skin had a slightly greenish tinge.
Leo didn’t understand what they were doing, but they were all crowded together in one spot, facing the pond and jostling for a better view. Several held up phone cameras, trying to get a shot over the heads of the others. Leo had never seen nymphs with phones. He wondered if they were looking at a dead body. If so, why were they bouncing up and down and giggling so excitedly?
“What are they looking at?” Leo wondered.
“Looking at,” Echo sighed.
“One way to find out.” Hazel marched forward and began nudging her way through the crowd. “Excuse us. Pardon me.”
“Hey!” one nymph complained. “We were here first!”
“Yeah,” another sniffed. “He won’t be interested in you.”
The second nymph had large red hearts painted on her cheeks. Over her dress, she wore a T-shirt that read: OMG, I <3 N!!!!
“Uh, demigod business,” Leo said, trying to sound official. “Make room. Thanks.”
The nymphs grumbled, but they parted to reveal a young man kneeling at the edge of the pond, gazing intently at the water.
Leo usually didn’t pay much attention to how other guys looked. He supposed that came from hanging around Jason—tall, blond, rugged, and basically everything Leo could never be. Leo was used to not being noticed by girls. At least, he knew he’d never get a girl by his looks. He hoped his personality and sense of humor would do that someday, though it definitely hadn’t worked yet.
At any rate, Leo couldn’t miss the fact that the guy at the pond was one super good-looking dude. He had a chiseled face with lips and eyes that were somewhere between feminine beautiful and masculine handsome. Dark hair swept over his brow. He might’ve been seventeen or twenty, it was hard to say, but he was built like a dancer—with long graceful arms and muscular legs, perfect posture and an air of regal calm. He wore a simple white T-shirt and jeans, with a bow and quiver strapped to his back. The weapons obviously hadn’t been used in a while. The arrows were covered in dust. A spider had woven a web in the top of the bow.
As Leo edged closer, he realized the guy’s face was unusually golden. In the sunset, the light was bouncing off a large flat sheet of Celestial bronze that lay at the bottom of the pond, washing Mr. Handsome’s features in a warm glow.
The guy seemed fascinated with his reflection in the metal.
Hazel inhaled sharply. “He’s gorgeous.”
Around her, the nymphs squealed and clapped in agreement.
“I am,” the young man murmured dreamily, his gaze still fixed on the water. “I am so gorgeous.”
One of the nymphs showed her iPhone screen. “His latest YouTube video got a million hits in like, an hour. I think I was half of those!”
The other nymphs giggled.
“YouTube video?” Leo asked. “What does he do in the video, sing?”
“No, silly!” the nymph chided. “He used to be a prince, and a wonderful hunter and stuff. But that doesn’t matter. Now he just…well, look!” She showed Leo the video. It was exactly what they were seeing in real life—the guy staring at himself in the pond.
“He is sooooo hot!” said another girl. Her T-shirt read: MRS. NARCISSUS.
“Narcissus?” Leo asked.
“Narcissus,” Echo agreed sadly.
Leo had forgotten Echo was there. Apparently none of the nymphs had noticed her either.
“Oh, not you again!” Mrs. Narcissus tried to push Echo away, but she misjudged where the camouflaged girl was and ended up shoving several other nymphs.
“You had your chance, Echo!” said the nymph with the iPhone. “He dumped you four thousand years ago! You are so not good enough for him.”
“For him,” Echo said bitterly.
“Wait.” Hazel clearly had trouble tearing her eyes away from the handsome guy, but she managed it. “What’s going on here? Why did Echo bring us here?”
One nymph rolled her eyes. She was holding an autograph pen and a crumpled poster of Narcissus. “Echo was a nymph like us, a long time ago, but she was a total chatterbox! Gossiping, blah, blah, blah, all the time.”
“I know!” another nymph shrieked. “Like, who could stand that? Just the other day, I told Cleopeia—you know she lives in the boulder next to me?—I said: Stop gossiping or you’ll end up like Echo. Cleopeia is such a big mouth! Did you hear what she said about that cloud nymph and the satyr?”
“Totally!” said the nymph with the poster. “So anyway, as punishment for blabbing, Hera cursed Echo so she could only repeat things, which was fine with us. But then Echo fell in love with our gorgeous guy, Narcissus—as if he would ever notice her.”
“As if!” said half a dozen others.
“Now she’s got some weird idea he needs saving,” said Mrs. Narcissus. “She should just go away.”
“Go away,” Echo growled back.
“I’m so glad Narcissus is alive again,” said another nymph in a gray dress. She had the words NARCISSUS + LAIEA written up and down her arms in black marker. “He’s like the best! And he’s in my territory.”
“Oh, stop it, Laiea,” her friend said. “I’m the pond nymph. You’re just the rock nymph.”
“Well, I’m the grass nymph,” another protested.
“No, he obviously came here because he likes the wildflowers!” another said. “Those are mine!”
The whole mob began arguing while Narcissus stared at the lake, ignoring them.
“Hold it!” Leo yelled. “Ladies, hold it! I need to ask Narcissus something.”
Slowly the nymphs settled down and went back to taking pictures.
Leo knelt next to the handsome dude. “So, Narcissus. What’s up?”
“Could you move?” Narcissus asked distractedly. “You’re ruining the view.”
Leo looked in the water. His own reflection rippled next to Narcissus’s on the surface of the submerged bronze. Leo didn’t have any desire to stare at himself. Compared to Narcissus, he looked like an undergrown troll. But there was no doubt the metal was a sheet of hammered Celestial bronze, roughly circular, about five feet in diameter.
What it was doing in this pond, Leo wasn’t sure. Celestial bronze fell to earth in odd places. He’d heard that most pieces were cast off from his dad’s various workshops. Hephaestus would lose his temper when projects didn’t work out, and he’d toss his scraps into the mortal world. This piece looked like it might have been meant as a shield for a god, but it hadn’t turned out properly. If Leo could get it back to the ship, it would be just enough bronze for his repairs.
“Right, great view,” Leo said. “Happy to move, but if you’re not using it, could I just take that sheet of bronze?”
“No,” Narcissus said. “I love him. He’s so gorgeous.”
Leo looked around to see if the nymphs were laughing. This had to be a huge joke. But they were swooning and nodding in agreement. Only Hazel seemed appalled. She wrinkled her nose as if she’d come to the conclusion that Narcissus smelled worse than he looked.
“Man,” Leo said to Narcissus. “You do realize that you’re looking at yourself in the water, right?”
“I am so great,” Narcissus sighed. He stretched out a hand longingly to touch the water, but held back. “No, I can’t make ripples. That ruins the image. Wow…I am so great.”
“Yeah,” Leo muttered. “But if I took the bronze, you could still see yourself in the water. Or here…” He reached in his tool belt and pulled out a simple mirror the size of a monocle. “I’ll trade you.”
Narcissus took the mirror, reluctantly, and admired himself. “Even you carry a picture of me? I don’t blame you. I am gorgeous. Thank you.” He set the mirror down and returned his attention to the pond. “But I already have a much better image. The color flatters me, don’t you think?”
“Oh, gods, yes!” a nymph screamed. “Marry me, Narcissus!”
“No, me!” another cried. “Would you sign my poster?”
“No, sign my shirt!”
“No, sign my forehead!”
“No, sign my—”
“Stop it!” Hazel snapped.
“Stop it,” Echo agreed.
Leo had lost sight of Echo again, but now he realized she was kneeling on the other side of Narcissus, waving her hand in front of his face as if trying to break his concentration. Narcissus didn’t even blink.
The nymph fan club tried to shove Hazel out of the way, but she drew her cavalry sword and forced them back. “Snap out of it!” she yelled.
“He won’t sign your sword,” the poster nymph complained.
“He won’t marry you,” said the iPhone girl. “And you can’t take his bronze mirror! That’s what keeps him here!”
“You’re all ridiculous,” Hazel said. “He’s so full of himself! How can you possibly like him?”
“Like him,” Echo sighed, still waving her hand in front of his face.
The others sighed along with her.
“I am so hot,” Narcissus said sympathetically.
“Narcissus, listen.” Hazel kept her sword at the ready. “Echo brought us here to help you. Didn’t you, Echo?”
“Echo,” said Echo.
“Who?” Narcissus said.
“The only girl who cares what happens to you, apparently,” Hazel said. “Do you remember dying?”
Narcissus frowned. “I…no. That can’t be right. I am much too important to die.”
“You died staring at yourself,” Hazel insisted. “I remember the story now. Nemesis was the goddess who cursed you, because you broke so many hearts. Your punishment was to fall in love with your own reflection.”
“I love me so, so much,” Narcissus agreed.
“You finally died,” Hazel continued. “I don’t know which version of the story is true. You either drowned yourself or turned into a flower hanging over the water or—Echo, which is it?”
“Which is it?” she said hopelessly.
Leo stood. “It doesn’t matter. The point is you’re alive again, man. You have a second chance. That’s what Nemesis was telling us. You can get up, and get on with your life. Echo is trying to save you. Or you can stay here and stare at yourself until you die again.”
“Stay here!” all the nymphs screamed.
“Marry me before you die!” another squeaked.
Narcissus shook his head. “You just want my reflection. I don’t blame you, but you can’t have it. I belong to me.”
Hazel sighed in exasperation. She glanced at the sun, which was sinking fast. Then she gestured with her sword toward the edge of the crater. “Leo, could we talk for a minute?”
“Excuse us,” Leo told Narcissus. “Echo, want to come with?”
“Come with,” Echo confirmed.
The nymphs clustered around Narcissus again and began recording new videos and taking more photos.
Hazel led the way until they were out of earshot. “Nemesis was right,” she said. “Some demigods can’t change their nature. Narcissus is going to stay there until he dies again.”
“No,” Leo said.
“No,” Echo agreed.
“We need that bronze,” Leo said. “If we take it away, it might give Narcissus a reason to snap out of it. Echo could have a chance to save him.”
“A chance to save him,” Echo said gratefully.
Hazel stabbed her sword in the sand. “It could also make several dozen nymphs very angry with us,” she said. “And Narcissus might still know how to shoot his bow.”
Leo pondered that. The sun was just about down. Nemesis had mentioned that Narcissus got agitated after dark, probably because he couldn’t see his reflection anymore. Leo didn’t want to stick around long enough to find out what the goddess meant by agitated. He’d also had experience with mobs of crazed nymphs. He wasn’t anxious to repeat that.
“Hazel,” he said, “your power with precious metal— Can you just detect it, or can you actually summon it to you?”
She frowned. “Sometimes I can summon it. I’ve never tried with a piece of Celestial bronze that big before. I might be able to draw it to me through the earth, but I’d have to be fairly close. It would take a lot of concentration, and it wouldn’t be fast.”
“Be fast,” Echo warned.
Leo cursed. He had hoped they could just go back to the ship, and Hazel could teleport the Celestial bronze from a safe distance.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll have to try something risky. Hazel, how about you try to summon the bronze from right here? Make it sink through the sand and tunnel over to you, then grab it and run for the ship.”
“But Narcissus is looking at it all the time,” she said.
“All the time,” Echo echoed.
“That’ll be my job,” Leo said, hating his own plan already. “Echo and I will cause a distraction.”
“Distraction?” Echo asked.
“I’ll explain,” Leo promised. “Are you willing?”
“Willing,” Echo said.
“Great,” Leo said. “Now, let’s hope we don’t die.”

Categories: The Mark of Athena