The House of Hades (Heroes of Olympus Book 4) (29 page)

‘H
OLY
H
EPHAESTUS,’
L
EO SAID.

The path opened into the nicest garden Leo had ever seen. Not that he had spent a lot of time in gardens, but
dang
. On the left was an orchard and a vineyard – peach trees with red-golden fruit that smelled awesome in the warm sun, carefully pruned vines bursting with grapes, bowers of flowering jasmine and a bunch of other plants Leo couldn’t name.

On the right were neat beds of vegetables and herbs, arranged like spokes around a big sparkling fountain where bronze satyrs spewed water into a central bowl.

At the back of the garden, where the footpath ended, a cave opened in the side of a grassy hill. Compared to
Bunker Nine
back at camp, the entrance was tiny, but it was impressive in its own way. On either side, crystalline rock had been carved into glittering Grecian columns. The tops were fitted with a bronze rod that held silky white curtains.

Leo’s nose was assaulted by good smells – cedar, juniper, jasmine, peaches and fresh herbs. The aroma from the cave really caught his attention – like beef stew cooking.

He started towards the entrance. Seriously, how could he not? He stopped when he noticed the girl. She was kneeling in her vegetable garden, her back to Leo. She muttered to herself as she dug furiously with a trowel.

Leo approached her from one side so she could see him. He didn’t feel like surprising her when she was armed with a sharp gardening implement.

She kept cursing in Ancient Greek and stabbing at the dirt. She had flecks of soil all over her arms, her face and her white dress, but she didn’t seem to care.

Leo could appreciate that. She looked better with a little mud – less like a beauty queen and more like an actual get-your-hands-dirty kind of person.

‘I think you’ve punished that dirt enough,’ he offered.

She scowled at him, her eyes red and watery. ‘Just go away.’

‘You’re crying,’ he said, which was stupidly obvious, but seeing her that way took the wind out of his helicopter blades, so to speak. It was hard to stay mad at someone who was crying.

‘None of your business,’ she muttered. ‘It’s a big island. Just … find your own place. Leave me alone.’ She waved vaguely towards the south. ‘Go that way, maybe.’

‘So, no magic raft,’ Leo said. ‘No other way off the island?’

‘Apparently not!’

‘What am I supposed to do, then? Sit in the sand dunes until I die?’

‘That would be fine …’ The girl threw down her trowel and cursed at the sky. ‘Except I suppose he
can’t
die here, can he? Zeus! This is not funny!’

Can’t
die here
?

‘Hold up.’ Leo’s head spun like a crankshaft. He couldn’t quite translate what this girl was saying – like when he heard Spaniards or South Americans speaking Spanish. Yeah, he could understand it, sort of, but it sounded so different that it was almost another language.

‘I’m going to need some more information here,’ he said. ‘You don’t want me in your face, that’s cool. I don’t want to be here either. But I’m not going to go die and in a corner. I have to get off this island. There’s
got
to be a way. Every problem has a fix.’

She laughed bitterly. ‘You haven’t lived very long, if you still believe that.’

The way she said it sent a shiver up his back. She looked the same age as him, but he wondered how old she really was.

‘You said something about a curse,’ he prompted.

She flexed her fingers, like she was practising her throat-strangling technique. ‘Yes. I cannot leave Ogygia. My father, Atlas, fought against the gods, and I supported him.’

‘Atlas,’ Leo said. ‘As in the
Titan
Atlas?’

The girl rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, you impossible little …’ Whatever she was going to say, she bit it back. ‘I was imprisoned here, where I could cause the Olympians no trouble. About a year ago, after the Second Titan War, the gods vowed to forgive their enemies and offer amnesty. Supposedly Percy made them promise –’

‘Percy,’ Leo said. ‘Percy Jackson?’

She squeezed her eyes shut. A tear trickled down her cheek.

Oh, Leo thought.

‘Percy came here,’ he said.

She dug her fingers into the soil. ‘I – I thought I would be released. I dared to hope … but I am still here.’

Leo remembered now. The story was supposed to be a secret, but of course that meant it had spread like wildfire across the camp. Percy had told Annabeth. Months later, when Percy had gone missing, Annabeth told Piper. Piper told Jason …

Percy had talked about visiting this island. He had met a goddess who’d developed a major crush on him and wanted him to stay, but eventually she let him go.

‘You’re that lady,’ Leo said. ‘The one who was named after Caribbean music.’

Her eyes glinted murderously. ‘Caribbean music.’

‘Yeah. Reggae?’ Leo shook his head. ‘Merengue? Hold on, I’ll get it.’

He snapped his fingers. ‘
Calypso
! But Percy said you were awesome. He said you were all sweet and helpful, not, um …’

She shot to her feet. ‘Yes?’

‘Uh, nothing,’ Leo said.

‘Would you be
sweet
,’ she demanded, ‘if the gods forgot their promise to let you go? Would you be sweet if they
laughed
at you by sending another hero, but a hero who looked like – like
you
?’

‘Is that a trick question?’

‘
Di Immortales!
’ She turned and marched into her cave.

‘Hey!’ Leo ran after her.

When he got inside, he lost his train of thought. The walls were made from multicoloured chunks of crystal. White curtains divided the cave into different rooms with comfy pillows and woven rugs and platters of fresh fruit. He spotted a harp in one corner, a loom in another and a big cooking pot where the stew was bubbling, filling the cavern with luscious smells.

The strangest thing? The chores were doing themselves. Towels floated through the air, folding and stacking into neat piles. Spoons washed themselves in a copper sink. The scene reminded Leo of the invisible wind spirits that had served him lunch at Camp Jupiter.

Calypso stood at a washbasin, cleaning the dirt off her arms.

She scowled at Leo, but she didn’t yell at him to leave. She seemed to be running out of energy for her anger.

Leo cleared his throat. If he was going to get any help from this lady, he needed to be nice. ‘So … I get why you’re angry. You probably never want to see another demigod again. I guess that didn’t sit right when, uh, Percy left you –’

‘He was only the latest,’ she growled. ‘Before him, it was that pirate Drake. And before him, Odysseus. They were all the same! The gods send me the greatest heroes, the ones I cannot help but …’

‘You fall in love with them,’ Leo guessed. ‘And then they leave you.’

Her chin trembled. ‘That is my curse. I had hoped to be
free of it by now, but here I am, still stuck on Ogygia after three thousand years.’

‘Three thousand.’ Leo’s mouth felt tingly, like he’d just eaten Pop Rocks. ‘Uh, you look good for three thousand.’

‘And now … the worst insult of all. The gods mock me by sending
you
.’

Anger bubbled in Leo’s stomach.

Yeah, typical. If Jason were here, Calypso would fall all over him. She’d beg him to stay, but he’d be all noble about returning to his duties, and he’d leave Calypso brokenhearted. That magic raft would
totally
arrive for him.

But Leo? He was the annoying guest she couldn’t get rid of. She’d never fall for him, because she was totally out of his league. Not that he cared. She wasn’t his type anyway. She was way too annoying and beautiful and – well, it didn’t matter.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave you alone. I’ll build something myself and get off this stupid island without your help.’

She shook her head sadly. ‘You don’t understand, do you? The gods are laughing at both of us. If the raft will not appear, that means they’ve closed Ogygia. You’re stuck here the same as me. You can never leave.’

T
HE 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 circumference 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 goddess Iris wasn’t interested in nuts and bolts.

He didn’t even dream, which was unusual for him – or for any demigod – 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 ship 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 passed 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 pass 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 shirts 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 embarrassing.

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 compass, 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 ship 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 – assuming 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 gods 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 gods 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 scraps.

He had no idea why the stuff was here. Hephaestus was always tossing broken parts out of his godly workshop and littering the earth with scrap 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 shield.

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 passed 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 scraps. 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-shirt, 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, Sunshine. 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 shirt, 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 assured 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 sunshine 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 shimmered to life.