The Battle of the Labyrinth

I’m not that powerful!”
    The god grunted. “Not that powerful, eh? Could have fooled me. You’re the son of the Earthshaker, lad. You don’t know your own strength.”
    That’s the last thing I wanted him to say. I hadn’t been in control of myself in that mountain. I’d released so much energy I’d almost vaporized myself, drained all the life out of me. Now I found out I’d nearly destroyed the Northwest U.S. and almost woken the most horrible monster ever imprisoned by the gods. Maybe I was too dangerous. Maybe it was safer for my friends to think I was dead.
    “What about Grover and Tyson?” I asked.
    Hephaestus shook his head. “No word, I’m afraid. I suppose the Labyrinth has them.”
    “So what am I supposed to do?”
    Hephaestus winced. “Don’t ever ask an old cripple for advice, lad. But I’ll tell you this. You’ve met my wife?”
    “Aphrodite.”
    “That’s her. She’s a tricky one, lad. Be careful of love. It’ll twist your brain around and leave you thinking up is down and right is wrong.”
    I thought about my meeting with Aphrodite, in the back of a white Cadillac in the desert last winter. She’d told me that she had taken a special interest in me, and she’d be making things hard for me in the romance department, just because she liked me.
    “Is this part of her plan?” I asked. “Did she land me here?”
    “Possibly. Hard to say with her. But if you decide to leave this place—and I don’t say what’s right or wrong— then I promised you an answer to your quest. I promised you the way to Daedalus. Well now, here’s the thing. It has nothing to do with Ariadne’s string. Not really. Sure, the string works. That’s what the Titan’s army will be after. But the best way through the maze . . . Theseus had the princess’s help. And the princess was a regular mortal. Not a drop of god blood in her. But she was clever, and she could see, lad. She could see very clearly. So what I’m saying—I think you know how to navigate the maze.”
    It finally sank in. Why hadn’t I seen it before? Hera had been right. The answer was there all the time.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I know.”
    “Then you’ll need to decide whether or not you’re leaving.”
    “I . . .” I wanted to say yes. Of course I would. But the words stuck in my throat. I found myself looking out at the lake, and suddenly the idea of leaving seemed very hard.
    “Don’t decide yet,” Hephaestus advised. “Wait until daybreak. Daybreak is a good time for decisions.”
    “Will Daedalus even help us?” I asked. “I mean, if he gives Luke a way to navigate the Labyrinth, we’re dead. I saw dreams about . . . Daedalus killed his nephew. He turned bitter and angry and—”
    “It isn’t easy being a brilliant inventor,” Hephaestus rumbled. “Always alone. Always misunderstood. Easy to turn bitter, make horrible mistakes. People are more difficult to work with than machines. And when you break a person, he can’t be fixed.”
    Hephaestus brushed the last drops of Pepsi off his work clothes. “Daedalus started well enough. He helped the Princess Ariadne and Theseus because he felt sorry for them. He tried to do a good deed. And everything in his life went bad because of it. Was that fair?” The god shrugged. “I don’t know if Daedalus will help you, lad, but don’t judge someone until you’ve stood at his forge and worked with his hammer, eh?”
    “I’ll—I’ll try.”
    Hephaestus stood. “Good-bye, lad. You did well, destroying the telekhines. I’ll always remember you for that.”
    It sounded very final, that good-bye. Then he erupted into a column of flame, and the fire moved over the water, heading back to the world outside.
    I walked along the beach for several hours. When I finally came back to the meadow, it was very late, maybe four or five in the morning, but Calypso was still in her garden, tending the flowers by starlight. Her moonlace glowed silver, and the other plants responded to the magic, glowing red and yellow and blue.
    “He has ordered you to return,” Calypso guessed.
    “Well, not ordered. He gave me a choice.”
    Her eyes met mine. “I promised I would not offer.”
    “Offer what?”
    “For you to stay.”
    “Stay,” I said. “Like . . . forever?”
    “You would be immortal on this island,” she said quietly. “You would never age or die. You could leave the fight to others, Percy Jackson. You could escape your prophecy.”
    I stared at her,