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Percy Jackson’s memory was a fickle thing. Most of the time, he remained himself, only half aware of what lingered beyond the waters of Lethe. He disliked the aftermath of submerging from the water, becoming aware again of what he had lost. With every passing year, every month he spent surrounded by celestial bronze and myths come alive, these moments of ignorance grew thinner. Not much longer and he wouldn’t be allowed to forget at all.
The Hunters let their arrows fly, a sight utterly unfamiliar to Percy, yet he recalled larger hands pressing a child sized bow into small ones and the triumphant grin that followed.
The first arrow caught the manticore in the neck and the next hit his chest, leaving the manticore to stagger backwards. He cursed, but Percy was already on his feet again, running towards the cliff. He was too young, too short.
“Annabeth!” he screamed, but he was too late as the monster, with Annabeth still on his back, leaped over the cliff and tumbled into the darkness.
Percy’s outstretched hand meant nothing for Annabeth couldn’t grab it in time. Above, reigned the sound of gunfire – a matter Percy ignored only until pain exploded in his shoulder. His hand came away red when he reached for it, but he barely registered it as blood. The water would heal it anyway, perhaps he should just jump over the cliff, dive after Annabeth—
The voice of a goddess rang over the battlefield.
“Mortals,” Artemis announced, “are not allowed to witness my hunt.”
Percy expected a tall woman, the goddess he worshipped as Artemis Delphinia, the benevolent huntress who guarded their home when Apollo didn’t and raised children to bare their teeth at enemies. Surrounded by the hunters stood a young girl with auburn hair. This was the goddess, but this wasn’t Percy’s goddess. His head exploded with pain heavy enough to dull the pain in his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Percy Jackson, but your friend is beyond help,” she told him, the grief in her eyes almost mortal.
The water clashed against the cliffs, devoid of a corpse. Gone then, but that was better than dead. As long as Annabeth was still alive, Percy would find her.
“Perseus needs treatment,” Artemis interrupted the bickering between Thalia and Zoë.
With all eyes turning to him and then drifting to the blood slowly soaking his shirt, conversation swiftly ended and the Hunters set up camp at a speed that would make anyone weep in competence. Percy was sat on a log alongside a few other Hunters. Not all of them were demigods, but all of them were girls. The eldest looked maybe sixteen and helped them to bandages and ambrosia with well-practiced eased. You could almost mistake her for a daughter of Apollo – and there were enough of those among the Hunters.
Children of Apollo were easy to spot for Percy, it was in their nature to resemble their father and Percy knew no god as well as him.
When she came to treat Percy, she blinked at the injury – double injury in fact. He half expected her to crack a joke about it. Annabeth would make fun of him to lighten the atmosphere, but it seemed like nobody else was up for that at the moment besides Nico di Angelo. The boy chatted Grover’s ear off.
Just when I thought Thalia might kill him for another comment on Annabeth, Zoë came up to us.
“Percy Jackson.”
Zoë was older than this age. She held herself like the royalty that used to come to the temple to ask for prophecy. She studied him like she wasn’t quite sure what to make of Percy, caught between distaste and curiosity.
“Come with me,” she finally said. “Lady Artemis wishes to speak with thee.”
Percy got up from his log and followed Zoë to the goddess’s tent. The inside didn’t look like it had only just been set up with silk rugs and pillows covering the floor. In the centre, a golden brazier of fire burned without fuel or smoke and behind the goddess, on a polished oak display stand, was her silver bow. The bow hadn’t changed since the first time Percy had seen it, carved to resemble gazelle horns.
“Join us, Percy Jackson,” the goddess said so he did as told.
A part of him wondered whether he would be presented food – or if he ought to offer her some for Zeus’s benevolence, the habits he was instilled from an early age. But perhaps this too was a tradition lost, echoing only in Percy’s recollection.
“You are surprised at my appearance,” Artemis stated, leaving no room for argument.
Percy didn’t know her like this, of course he was surprised at her appearance. From a man barely out of boyhood to a geriatric, who hadn’t been able to leave the bed without aid, he had only ever seen the goddess with one appearance.
“Yes.”
“I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want, but this is what I prefer,” Artemis explained. “This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray.”
“Go astray?”
“Grow up,” she answered almost too flippantly. “Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. Forget themselves.”
Percy thought of the people Artemis Delphinia surrounded herself with, young and old, children whose hands didn’t have callouses from bowstrings yet, women from everywhere. The goddess in front of him seemed like a faulty echo to the one he remembered.
“You didn’t used to be like this,” he blurted out before he knew any better.
Zoë was on her feet before he had even finished the sentence, dagger in hand. “How dare you—”
She stopped as Artemis held up her hand. Unlike her appearance, her eyes were older than the earth. “You speak with such confidence.”
She cocked her head – and he wondered if she could see the life he had lived, the steps taken in the mountainside, the ocean travelled, the blood on his blade.
And then she turned her attention to Zoë again. “Tell Bianca of the Hunters. I will call my brother to bring you all to Camp.”
Zoë’s expression fell, but she inclined her head instead protesting as Artemis bid Percy to follow. She stepped out of the tent, out of her circle of Hunters and her appearance shifted. She grew taller and the gear she wore was replaced with a chiton an animal pelt. The Hunters seemed surprised at her appearance, as though never witnessed before.
Artemis didn’t blink at the change, but she looked down at herself before glancing back at Percy. “You do know me,” she said, then stood, glancing at the sky.
The silence seemed unbearable.
Percy had never been good at waiting, distracted by a hundred different things and the knowledge that he could spend his time tackling the dozen other tasks waiting for him. He could be going after Annabeth. She might not be in the sea, but she had to be somewhere and the longer they stood her waiting for dawn to arrive, the more time did they waste.
And then the sun did rise – came crashing down at once. The world turned so bright that Percy closed his eyes on instinct. Only when the burning faded, did he dare to open them again.
A red convertible Maserati Spyder stood in a perfect circle of green grass, the snow melted just where the car was parked. The driver got out, his tanned face decorated with an easy smile. His blond hair was carefully curled and styled as though a teen boy heartthrob model out of a magazine.
“Wow,” Thalia muttered beside Percy. “Apollo is hot.”
“Little sister!” Apollo called. “Woah, not so little today. Haven’t seen you like that in a while.”
Frivolous, teeth bleached white enough to blind us, ever growing brighter, but not at all mightier. The god in his memories used to look like divinity, younger than all the others, but he had build his temple and led Percy from a ship bound to Pylos to Delphi, given him a responsibility and a duty, but this wasn’t the same god, this wasn’t who Percy needed to retrieve his friend.
“So what’s up?” Apollo continued to speak with such enraging ease. “Got the girls with you, I see. You all need some tips on archery?”
Percy had wondered about him when he went to speak with the Oracle for the first time and had seen what became of it. He had wanted to cradle the mummy in his arms as he had held the Pythia when she was small, entirely unaware of her gift and the danger it posed. Percy had imagined the god weakened, for any other version of him would surely not rest until his Oracle was restored to its former glory, not this husk, this degraded curse.
“What happened to you?” Percy interrupted the back and forth between the gods.
It was neither wise nor polite, nothing of the things his mother had taught him, but she too had once stood in front of this god, her granddaughter held to her chest and proclaimed the wrath of Poseidon. It had amused him then, but the god of Percy’s devotion had taken her words as an equal promise of protection.
This Apollo turned to him. “Huh? Oh, Percy Jackson!”
His impossible wide grin widened even further – and then vanished at once. “You…”
Anger boiled beneath Percy’s skin as he repeated himself, “What happened to you? How are you standing here like this, a useless child—”
Oh, he had said too much, Grover’s panic echoing at the back of his head, Thalia next to him grabbing his arm for all that she disliked him as Apollo seemed to grow in height with every step he advanced towards them.
And still, Percy couldn’t stop himself from speaking, an oath of honesty, of loyalty and devotion asking him to speak in the name of a girl now long dead and a girl he could yet save.
“Apollo Pythian,” Percy addressed the god he wanted to meet, not this watered down version. “What have you done?”
And Apollo stilled. He stood close enough that he’d just need to wrap his hand around Percy’s throat for his impertinence.
“You have Phemonoë’s eye,” Apollo suddenly said.
“Phemonoë had mine,” Percy bit out. Percy’s eyes, his mother’s eyes, the eyes of the god who was his father in this life.
Apollo raised his hand to Percy’s chin and tipped it upwards. The image he showed before, flickered closer to the god Percy remembered. “Did Lethe forget you?”
“It tried,” Percy answered. It wasn’t as though he knew what had made him like this, half boy, mostly a man who died over a millennia ago. Perhaps this would be the moment the balance cracked and he would not be allowed to return to ignorance.
And then Apollo laughed, a sharp and bitter thing. “Another curse upon my Oracle then? Have you been here before?”
Percy swallowed, but it wasn’t as though he would know. Maybe he had forgotten before.
“I suppose you would be disappointed with this age,” Apollo muttered and let go of Percy’s chin. “For the sake of the other demigods, you should not want it back. They are not like you.”
Then they are lacking, Percy wanted to answer, chosen for his strength before, selected by the god to raise his first Oracle. The gods of this age were weak and they were soft and useless. Their children would die.
Annabeth would die.
“To camp, sister?” Apollo asked Artemis.
The goddess of the hunt stayed silent for a moment, then nodded. “Yes.”
Apollo let go of Percy. He was still dressed like the youth of today, but his expression – that was the god Percy once knew.
“Well!” Apollo continued cheerfully. “We’d better load up, huh? Ride only goes one way – west. And if you miss it, you miss it. Daughter of Zeus, yes, you, littlest sister. Care to drive? You will do well, you were born for this…”
The car changed into a bus and they were all herded inside like cattle.
“Percy?” Grover asked into the quiet. “Are you alright?”
Percy wanted to put his xiphos through someone’s body. He exhaled, tried to put the memories to rest. The gods used to be mightier, yes, but also crueler. They weren’t made for this age.
He blinked, wondering why he had been so angry at all in the first place.
“I’m okay,” Percy answered. “We have to go save Annabeth.”
They would need a quest, a prophecy – his chest tightened – and then they would go find her.
Apollo’s eyes did not leave him.