The Sea of Monsters

west by northwest of our destination. But that didn’t make me feel any less lost.
    No matter which way we turned, the sun seemed to shine straight into my eyes. We took turns sipping from the Dr Pepper, shading ourselves with the sail as best we could. And we talked about my latest dream of Grover.
    By Annabeth’s estimate, we had less than twenty-four hours to find Grover, assuming my dream was accurate, and assuming the Cyclops Polyphemus didn’t change his mind and try to marry Grover earlier.
    “Yeah,” I said bitterly. “You can never trust a Cyclops.”
    Annabeth stared across the water. “I’m sorry, Percy. I was wrong about Tyson, okay? I wish I could tell him that.”
    I tried to stay mad at her, but it wasn’t easy. We’d been through a lot together. She’d saved my life plenty of times. It was stupid of me to resent her.
    I looked down at our measly possessions—the empty wind thermos, the bottle of multivitamins. I thought about Luke’s look of rage when I’d tried to talk to him about his dad.
    “Annabeth, what’s Chiron’s prophecy?”
    She pursed her lips. “Percy, I shouldn’t—”
    “I know Chiron promised the gods he wouldn’t tell me. But you didn’t promise, did you?”
    “Knowledge isn’t always good for you.”
    “Your mom is the wisdom goddess!”
    “I know! But every time heroes learn the future, they try to change it, and it never works.”
    “The gods are worried about something I’ll do when I get older,” I guessed. “Something when I turn sixteen.”
    Annabeth twisted her Yankees cap in her hands. “Percy, I don’t know the full prophecy, but it warns about a half-blood child of the Big Three—the next one who lives to the age of sixteen. That’s the real reason Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades swore a pact after World War II not to have any more kids. The next child of the Big Three who reaches sixteen will be a dangerous weapon.”
    “Why?”
    “Because that hero will decide the fate of Olympus. He or she will make a decision that either saves the Age of the Gods, or destroys it.”
    I let that sink in. I don’t get seasick, but suddenly I felt ill. “That’s why Kronos didn’t kill me last summer.”
    She nodded. “You could be very useful to him. If he can get you on his side, the gods will be in serious trouble.”
    “But if it’s me in the prophecy—”
    “We’ll only know that if you survive three more years. That can be a long time for a half-blood. When Chiron first learned about Thalia, he assumed she was the one in the prophecy. That’s why he was so desperate to get her safely to camp. Then she went down fighting and got turned into a pine tree and none of us knew what to think. Until you came along.”
    On our port side, a spiky green dorsal fin about fifteen feet long curled out of the water and disappeared.
    “This kid in the prophecy . . . he or she couldn’t be like, a Cyclops?” I asked. “The Big Three have lots of monster children.”
    Annabeth shook her head. “The Oracle said ‘halfblood.’ That always means half-human, half-god. There’s really nobody alive who it could be, except you.”
    “Then why do the gods even let me live? It would be safer to kill me.”
    “You’re right.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “Percy, I don’t know. I guess some of the gods would like to kill you, but they’re probably afraid of offending Poseidon. Other gods . . . maybe they’re still watching you, trying to decide what kind of hero you’re going be. You could be a weapon for their survival, after all. The real question is . . . what will you do in three years? What decision will you make?”
    “Did the prophecy give any hints?”
    Annabeth hesitated.
    Maybe she would’ve told me more, but just then a seagull swooped down out of nowhere and landed on our makeshift mast. Annabeth looked startled as the bird dropped a small cluster of leaves into her lap.
    “Land,” she said. “There’s land nearby!”
    I sat up. Sure enough, there was a line of blue and brown in the distance. Another minute and I could make out an island with a small mountain in the center, a dazzling white collection of buildings, a beach dotted with palm trees, and a harbor filled with a strange assortment of boats.
    The current was pulling our rowboat toward what looked like a tropical paradise.
    “Welcome!” said the lady with the clipboard.
    She looked like a flight attendant—blue business suit, perfect makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail. She