Heroes Of Olympus - The House Of Hades Part 38

LI.

LEO.

THE FIRST FEW DAYS WERE THE WORST.

Leo slept outside on a bed of drop cloths under the stars. It got cold at night, even on the beach in the summer, so he built fires with the remains of Calypso's dining table. That cheered him up a little.

During the days, he walked the circ.u.mference of the island and found nothing of interest unless you liked beaches and endless sea in every direction. He tried to send an Iris-message in the rainbows that formed in the sea spray, but he had no luck. He didn't have any drachmas for an offering, and apparently the G.o.ddess Iris wasn't interested in nuts and bolts.

He didn't even dream, which was unusual for him or for any demiG.o.d so he had no idea what was going on in the outside world. Had his friends got rid of Khione? Were they looking for him, or had they sailed on to Epirus to complete the quest?

He wasn't even sure what to hope for.

The dream he'd had back on the Argo II finally made sense to him when the evil sorceress lady had told him to either jump off a cliff into the clouds, or descend into a dark tunnel where ghostly voices whispered. That tunnel must have represented the House of Hades, which Leo would never see now. He'd taken the cliff instead falling through the sky to this stupid island. But in the dream Leo had been given a choice. In real life he'd had none. Khione had simply plucked him off his s.h.i.+p and shot him into orbit. Totally unfair.

The worst part of being stuck here? He was losing track of the days. He woke up one morning and couldn't remember if he'd been on Ogygia for three nights or four.

Calypso wasn't much help. Leo confronted her in the garden, but she just shook her head. 'Time is difficult here.'

Great. For all Leo knew, a century had pa.s.sed in the real world and the war with Gaia was over for better or worse. Or maybe he'd only been on Ogygia for five minutes. His whole life might pa.s.s here in the time it took his friends on the Argo II to have breakfast.

Either way, he needed to get off this island.

Calypso took pity on him in some ways. She sent her invisible servants to leave bowls of stew and goblets of lemonade at the edge of the garden. She even sent him a few new sets of clothes simple undyed cotton trousers and s.h.i.+rts that she must have made on her loom. They fitted him so well, Leo wondered how she'd got his measurements. Maybe she just used her generic pattern for SCRAWNY MALE.

Anyway, he was glad to have new threads, since his old ones were pretty smelly and burnt. Usually Leo could keep his clothes from burning when he caught fire, but it took concentration. Sometimes back at camp, if he wasn't thinking about it, he'd be working on some metal project at the hot forge, look down and realize his clothes had burned away, except for his magic tool belt and a smoking pair of underpants. Kind of embarra.s.sing.

Despite the gifts, Calypso obviously didn't want to see him. One time he poked his head inside the cave and she freaked out, yelling and throwing pots at his head.

Yeah, she was definitely on Team Leo.

He ended up pitching a more permanent camp near the footpath, where the beach met the hills. That way he was close enough to pick up his meals, but Calypso didn't have to see him and go into a pot-throwing rage.

He made himself a lean-to with sticks and canvas. He dug a campfire pit. He even managed to build himself a bench and a worktable from some driftwood and dead cedar branches. He spent hours fixing the Archimedes sphere, cleaning it and repairing its circuits. He made himself a compa.s.s, but the needle would spin all crazy no matter what he tried. Leo guessed a GPS would have been useless, too. This island was designed to be off the charts, impossible to leave.

He remembered the old bronze astrolabe he'd picked up in Bologna the one the dwarfs told him Odysseus had made. He had a sneaking suspicion Odysseus had been thinking about this island when he constructed it, but unfortunately Leo had left it back on the s.h.i.+p with Buford the Wonder Table. Besides, the dwarfs had told him the astrolabe didn't work. Something about a missing crystal ...

He walked the beach, wondering why Khione had sent him here a.s.suming his landing here wasn't an accident. Why not just kill him instead? Maybe Khione wanted him to be in limbo forever. Perhaps she knew the G.o.ds were too incapacitated to pay attention to Ogygia, and so the island's magic was broken. That could be why Calypso was still stuck here and why the magic raft wouldn't appear for Leo.

Or maybe the magic of this place was working just fine. The G.o.ds had punished Calypso by sending her buff courageous dudes who left as soon as she fell for them. Maybe that was the problem. Calypso would never fall for Leo. She wanted him to leave. So they were stuck in a vicious circle. If that was Khione's plan ... wow. Major-league devious.

Then one morning he made a discovery, and things got even more complicated.

Leo was walking in the hills, following a little brook that ran between two big cedar trees. He liked this area it was the only place on Ogygia where he couldn't see the sea, so he could pretend he wasn't stuck on an island. In the shade of the trees, he almost felt like he was back at Camp Half-Blood, heading through the woods towards Bunker Nine.

He jumped over the creek. Instead of landing on soft earth, his feet hit something much harder.

CLANG.

Metal.

Excited, Leo dug through the mulch until he saw the glint of bronze.

'Oh, man.' He giggled like a crazy person as he excavated the sc.r.a.ps.

He had no idea why the stuff was here. Hephaestus was always tossing broken parts out of his G.o.dly workshop and littering the earth with sc.r.a.p metal, but what were the chances some of it would hit Ogygia?

Leo found a handful of wires, a few bent gears, a piston that might still work and several hammered sheets of Celestial bronze the smallest the size of a drink coaster, the largest the size of a war s.h.i.+eld.

It wasn't a lot not compared to Bunker Nine or even to his supplies aboard the Argo II. But it was more than sand and rocks.

He looked up at the sunlight winking through the cedar branches. 'Dad? If you sent this here for me thanks. If you didn't ... well, thanks, anyway.'

He gathered up his treasure trove and lugged it back to his campsite.

After that, the days pa.s.sed more quickly, and with a lot more noise.

First Leo made himself a forge out of mud bricks, each one baked with his own fiery hands. He found a large rock he could use as an anvil base, and he pulled nails from his tool belt until he had enough to melt into a plate for a hammering surface.

Once that was done, he began to recast the Celestial bronze sc.r.a.ps. Each day his hammer rang on bronze until his rock anvil broke, or his tongs bent, or he ran out of firewood.

Each evening he collapsed, drenched in sweat and covered in soot, but he felt great. At least he was working, trying to solve his problem.

The first time Calypso came to check on him, it was to complain about the noise.

'Smoke and fire,' she said. 'Clanging on metal all day long. You're scaring away the birds!'

'Oh, no, not the birds!' Leo grumbled.

'What do you hope to accomplish?'

He glanced up and almost smashed his thumb with his hammer. He'd been staring at metal and fire so long he'd forgotten how beautiful Calypso was. Annoyingly beautiful. She stood there with the sunlight in her hair, her white skirt fluttering around her legs, a basket of grapes and fresh-baked bread tucked under one arm.

Leo tried to ignore his rumbling stomach.

'I'm hoping to get off this island,' he said. 'That is what you want, right?'

Calypso scowled. She set the basket near his bedroll. 'You haven't eaten in two days. Take a break and eat.'

'Two days?' Leo hadn't even noticed, which surprised him, since he liked food. He was even more surprised that Calypso had noticed.

'Thanks,' he muttered. 'I'll, uh, try to hammer more quietly.'

'Huh.' She sounded unimpressed.

After that, she didn't complain about the noise or the smoke.

The next time she visited, Leo was putting the final touches to his first project. He didn't see her approach until she spoke right behind him.

'I brought you '

Leo jumped, dropping his wires. 'Bronze bulls, girl! Don't sneak up on me like that!'

She was wearing red today Leo's favourite colour. That was completely irrelevant. She looked really good in red. Also irrelevant.

'I wasn't sneaking,' she said. 'I was bringing you these.'

She showed him the clothes that were folded over her arm: a new pair of jeans, a white T-s.h.i.+rt, an army fatigue jacket ... wait, those were his clothes, except that they couldn't be. His original army jacket had burned up months ago. He hadn't been wearing it when he landed on Ogygia. But the clothes Calypso held looked exactly like the clothes he'd been wearing the first day he'd arrived at Camp Half-Blood except these looked bigger, resized to fit him better.

'How?' he asked.

Calypso set the clothes at his feet and backed away as if he were a dangerous beast. 'I do have a little magic, you know. You keep burning through the clothes I give you, so I thought I would weave something less flammable.'

'These won't burn?' He picked up the jeans, but they felt just like normal denim.

'They are completely fireproof,' Calypso promised. 'They'll stay clean and expand to fit you, should you ever become less scrawny.'

'Thanks.' He meant it to sound sarcastic, but he was honestly impressed. Leo could make a lot of things, but an inflammable, self-cleaning outfit wasn't one of them. 'So ... you made an exact replica of my favourite outfit. Did you, like, google me or something?'

She frowned. 'I don't know that word.'

'You looked me up,' he said. 'Almost like you had some interest in me.'

She wrinkled her nose. 'I have an interest in not making you a new set of clothes every other day. I have an interest in you not smelling so bad and walking around my island in smouldering rags.'

'Oh, yeah.' Leo grinned. 'You're really warming up to me.'

Her face got even redder. 'You are the most insufferable person I have ever met! I was only returning a favour. You fixed my fountain.'

'That?' Leo laughed. The problem had been so simple he'd almost forgotten about it. One of the bronze satyrs had been turned sideways and the water pressure was off, so it started making an annoying ticking sound, jiggling up and down and spewing water over the rim of the pool. He'd pulled out a couple of tools and fixed it in about two minutes. 'That was no big deal. I don't like it when things don't work right.'

'And the curtains across the cave entrance?'

'The rod wasn't level.'

'And my gardening tools?'

'Look, I just sharpened the shears. Cutting vines with a dull blade is dangerous. And the pruners needed to be oiled at the hinge, and '

'Oh, yeah,' Calypso said, in a pretty good imitation of his voice. 'You're really warming up to me.'

For once, Leo was speechless. Calypso's eyes glittered. He knew she was making fun of him, but somehow it didn't feel mean.

She pointed at his worktable. 'What are you building?'

'Oh.' He looked at the bronze mirror, which he'd just finished wiring up to the Archimedes sphere. In the screen's polished surface, his own reflection surprised him. His hair had grown out longer and curlier. His face was thinner and more chiselled, maybe because he hadn't been eating. His eyes were dark and a little ferocious when he wasn't smiling kind of a Tarzan look, if Tarzan came in extra-small Latino. He couldn't blame Calypso for backing away from him.

'Uh, it's a seeing device,' he said. 'We found one like this in Rome, in the workshop of Archimedes. If I can make it work, maybe I can find out what's going on with my friends.'

Calypso shook her head. 'That's impossible. This island is hidden, cut off from the world by strong magic. Time doesn't even flow the same here.'

'Well, you've got to have some kind of outside contact. How did you find out that I used to wear an army jacket?'

She twisted her hair as if the question made her uncomfortable. 'Seeing the past is simple magic. Seeing the present or the future that is not.'

'Yeah, well,' Leo said. 'Watch and learn, Suns.h.i.+ne. I just connect these last two wires, and '

The bronze plate sparked. Smoke billowed from the sphere. A flash fire raced up Leo's sleeve. He pulled off his s.h.i.+rt, threw it down and stomped on it.

He could tell Calypso was trying not to laugh, but she was shaking with the effort.

'Not a word,' Leo warned.

She glanced at his bare chest, which was sweaty, bony and streaked with old scars from weapon-making accidents.

'Nothing worth commenting on,' she a.s.sured him. 'If you want that device to work, perhaps you should try a musical invocation.'

'Right,' he said. 'Whenever an engine malfunctions, I like to tap-dance around it. Works every time.'

She took a deep breath and began to sing.

Her voice hit him like a cool breeze like that first cold front in Texas when the summer heat finally breaks and you start to believe things might get better. Leo couldn't understand the words, but the song was plaintive and bittersweet, as if she were describing a home she could never return to.

Her singing was magic, no doubt. But it wasn't like Medea's trance-inducing voice, or even Piper's charmspeak. The music didn't want anything from him. It simply reminded him of his best memories building things with his mom in her workshop; sitting in the suns.h.i.+ne with his friends at camp. It made him miss home.

Calypso stopped singing. Leo realized he was staring like an idiot.

'Any luck?' she asked.

'Uh ...' He forced his eyes back to the bronze mirror. 'Nothing. Wait ...'

The screen glowed. In the air above it, holographic pictures s.h.i.+mmered to life.

Leo recognized the commons at Camp Half-Blood.

There was no sound, but Clarisse LaRue from the Ares Cabin was yelling orders at the campers, forming them into lines. Leo's brethren from Cabin Nine hurried around, fitting everyone with armour and pa.s.sing out weapons.

Even Chiron the centaur was dressed for war. He trotted up and down the ranks, his plumed helmet gleaming, his legs decked in bronze greaves. His usual friendly smile was gone, replaced with a look of grim determination.

In the distance, Greek triremes floated on Long Island Sound, prepped for war. Along the hills, catapults were being primed. Satyrs patrolled the fields, and riders on pegasi circled overhead, alert for aerial attacks.