The Battle of the Labyrinth

nervously.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve just grown used to caring for you. As to how you got here, you fell from the sky. You landed in the water, just there.” She pointed across the beach. “I do not know how you survived. The water seemed to cushion your fall. As to where you are, you are in Ogygia.”
    She pronounced it like oh-jee-jee-ah .
    “Is that near Mount St. Helens?” I asked, because my geography was pretty terrible.
    Calypso laughed. It was a small restrained laugh, like she found me really funny but didn’t want to embarrass me. She was cute when she laughed.
    “It isn’t near anything, brave one,” she said. “Ogygia is my phantom island. It exists by itself, anywhere and nowhere. You can heal here in safety. Never fear.”
    “But my friends—”
    “Annabeth,” she said. “And Grover and Tyson?”
    “Yes!” I said. “I have to get back to them. They’re in danger.”
    She touched my face, and I didn’t back away this time. “Rest first. You are no good to your friends until you heal.”
    As soon as she said it, I realized how tired I was. “You’re not . . . you’re not an evil sorceress, are you?”
    She smiled coyly. “Why would you think that?”
    “Well, I met Circe once, and she had a pretty nice island, too. Except she liked to turn men into guinea pigs.”
    Calypso gave me that laugh again. “I promise I will not turn you into a guinea pig.”
    “Or anything else?”
    “I am no evil sorceress,” Calypso said. “And I am not your enemy, brave one. Now rest. Your eyes are already closing.”
    She was right. My knees buckled, and I would’ve landed face-first in the gravel if Calypso hadn’t caught me. Her hair smelled like cinnamon. She was very strong, or maybe I was just really weak and thin. She walked me back to a cushioned bench by the fountain and helped me lie down.
    “Rest,” she ordered. And I fell asleep to the sound of the fountains and the smell of cinnamon and juniper.
    The next time I awoke it was night, but I wasn’t sure if it was the same night or many nights later. I was in the bed in the cave, but I rose and wrapped a robe around myself and padded outside. The stars were brilliant—thousands of them, like you only see way out in the country. I could make out all the constellations Annabeth had taught me: Capricorn, Pegasus, Sagittarius. And there, near the southern horizon, was a new constellation: the Huntress, a tribute to a friend of ours who had died last winter.
    “Percy, what do you see?”
    I brought my eyes back to earth. However amazing the stars were, Calypso was twice as brilliant. I mean, I’ve seen the goddess of love herself, Aphrodite, and I would never say this out loud or she’d blast me to ashes, but for my money, Calypso was a lot more beautiful, because she just seemed so natural, like she wasn’t trying to be beautiful and didn’t even care about that. She just was . With her braided hair and white dress, she seemed to glow in the moonlight. She was holding a tiny plant in her hands. Its flowers were silver and delicate.
    “I was just looking at . . .” I found myself staring at her face. “Uh . . . I forgot.”
    She laughed gently. “Well, as long as you’re up, you can help me plant these.”
    She handed me a plant, which had a clump of dirt and roots at the base. The flowers glowed as I held them.
    Calypso picked up her gardening spade and directed me to the edge of the garden, where she began to dig.
    “That’s moonlace,” Calypso explained. “It can only be planted at night.”
    I watched the silvery light flicker around the petals. “What does it do?”
    “Do?” Calypso mused. “It doesn’t really do anything, I suppose. It lives, it gives light, it provides beauty. Does it have to do anything else?”
    “I suppose not,” I said.
    She took the plant, and our hands met. Her fingers were warm. She planted the moonlace and stepped back, surveying her work. “I love my garden.”
    “It’s awesome,” I agreed. I mean, I wasn’t exactly a gardening type, but Calypso had arbors covered with six different colors of roses, lattices filled with honeysuckle, rows of grapevines bursting with red and purple grapes that would’ve made Dionysus sit up and beg.
    “Back home,” I said, “my mom always wanted a garden.”
    “Why did she not plant one?”
    “Well, we live in Manhattan. In an apartment.”
    “Manhattan? Apartment?”
    I stared at her. “You don’t know what I’m talking