Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan

Author:Rick Riordan [Riordan, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Disney Book Group
Published: 2023-08-29T00:00:00+00:00

I wished Elisson would make up his mind.

Throw me out of the water. Drag me into the water. Pummel me with sarcasm. There were so many interesting ways to kill me, he couldn’t decide.

To be clear, I’m not an easy person to drown. But when there’s a river god tossing me around at the bottom of his grotto, flushing gunk through my nostrils and mouth, it’s like trying to breathe in a sandstorm. I was blind and disoriented, slamming into rocks, unable to concentrate.

And that made me angry.

Demigod powers can be weird. Back when I was ten or eleven, things just happened, and I didn’t understand why. Fountains would come alive. Toilets would explode. Controlling water was something I did instinctively, only when I was scared or angry—kind of like the Hulk, except with plumbing. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned to control my powers, more or less. Now I can make your lawn sprinklers explode on command. (I rent myself out for kids’ birthday parties. Call me.)

But despite my better control, there are still moments when my power gets away from me. It’s kind of like if you think, Oh, I’m too mature to cry like a little kid, and then you see a movie about a cute puppy that gets lost, and you start bawling. Or you think you’ve got your temper under control, then you get a bad grade and throw a world-class tantrum, so your skateboard ends up sticking out of your bedroom wall, impaling your favorite Jimi Hendrix poster. These are purely hypothetical examples, of course.

Anyway, that’s what happened at the bottom of Elisson’s pool. As I was tossed around, flipped, and pummeled like laundry on a heavy-duty cycle, my control crumbled. I was a scared kid again, screaming for the big bad world to leave me alone. My rage exploded.

And so did the river. It blasted away from me in every direction, putting me at ground zero of the detonation—curled up alone in a bubble of air, howling so loudly I could hear myself even over the roar of the torrent. Some part of me had reached outward . . . not just into the pool, but to the source of the river, deep down in the Underworld or maybe Yonkers, and I had pulled it up by its roots. Millions of metric tons of water roared through the cavern, flooding the pool, scouring the cliffs, surging over the riverbanks, and probably surprising a whole bunch of snakes bathing downstream.

At last, the water crashed back around me, settling into its normal flow again.

I was trembling, strung out, and terrified by what I’d done. I don’t know how long it took me to regain my senses. Seconds? Minutes? As the silt cleared, I looked up and had one clear thought: Annabeth. If I had accidentally washed her into the Atlantic, I would never forgive myself.

I shot to the surface.

I shouldn’t have worried. On the ledge above, Annabeth sat with her ankles crossed, talking calmly with a very rattled Elisson.

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