Demigods and Monsters (18 page)

Hang on—personal loyalty surely isn't a
flaw
! Fidelity is a virtue! But if it's used against our hero, in the wrong context, Percy refusing to sacrifice a loved one to save the world could mean the downfall of Olympus. Even a virtue can become a weapon for wrongdoing if it is manipulated by an evil force, just as a disability can serve as a mark of heroism and strength. And maybe, just maybe, that twist in point of view will make the reader think twice about those people who can't walk or read. Why not try to find out what heroic characteristics their disabilities disguise?

 

 

International Dyslexia Association
http://www.interdys.org

 

National Institute of Mental Health
http://www.nimh.nih.gov

 

For NIMH's information on ADHD, see
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/adhd/complete-publication.shtml

 

Epilepsy Foundation
http://www.epilepsyfoundation.org

Disability is a subject that is close to home for Elizabeth E. Wein. Her brother, who was severely brain-damaged in a car accident at the age of eleven, is permanently confined to a wheelchair. The hero of her latest books is missing an arm.

Elizabeth's young adult novels include
The Winter Prince
,
A Coalition of Lions
, and
The Sunbird
, all set in Arthurian Britain and sixth-century Ethiopia. The cycle continues in The Mark of Solomon (Viking), published in two parts as
The Lion Hunter
(2007) and
The Empty Kingdom
(2008). Recent short fiction appears in Sharyn November's
Firebirds Soaring
(Firebird 2009).

Elizabeth has a Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania. She and her husband share a passion for maps, and fly small planes. They live in Scotland with their two children.

Elizabeth's Web site is
www.elizabethwein.com
.

L
et's talk about me. I'm five. My younger sister is four and possibly the most annoying creature ever born. She wants to do everything I do, including use the very same crayon that I am using at the same time that I am using it. Cardinal red. It's my favorite color, and I need it for the rainbow picture that I am making for my grandmother. All the other colors are filled in. I need the cardinal red crayon. All I want, all I ever wanted, is for this pesky little sister to go away and leave me
alone, so I give her the “evil eye,” which means that I'm crossing my eyes at her and sticking out my tongue. My mother is standing at the kitchen sink, her back to us, so how can she possibly know I am doing this mean thing to my little sister? But out of her mouth I hear this prophecy: “Your eyeballs are going to freeze like that.”

Suddenly all I can think about are eyeballs, the one that must be hidden somewhere in the back of my mother's head and my own two that are about to turn into ice cubes. It's enough to make me quickly slip my tongue back into my mouth and uncross my eyeballs. Even though my tongue wasn't mentioned, can it be far behind?

Beyond that, which is more threatening? The prospect of my cold eyes forever seeing only the fuzzy ridge of my own nose, or my mother who seems to see all and know all? Here was a person in authority, who held some power over me and who also seemed to know what I was up to without even watching. My mother, ruler of the household, goddess of the realm. At that moment the future was certain. Frozen eyeballs were going to happen, unless. . . .

My omnipotent mother was just as convincing to five-year-old me as the Oracle at Delphi must have been to all those pilgrims who sought answers from her while she sat on her odd tripod perch, breathing in the wafting fumes from the fissure below her and delivering her pithy prophecies. Like the Oracle, there was no real explaining where or how my mother got her information. She just did.

In fact, every culture has had and continues to have its various prophets, seers, and soothsayers, from the ridiculous to the divine and there are those who gaze into crystal balls and read tea leaves. There are those in the same league as John the Baptist, who foresaw the coming of Jesus in the New Testament. In fact, many of the most significant prophets were alike in that they foretold the coming of a divine figure.

Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson is hardly divine, but at the very core of his series is an overarching prophecy, one that we don't fully
learn of until well into the third book,
The Titan's Curse
: “Years ago, Chiron had had a prophecy about the next child of the Big Three—Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades—who turned sixteen. Supposedly, that kid would make a decision that would save or destroy the gods forever.”

That, my friends, is one whopper of a prophecy! And while we certainly can't assume that Chiron is equal to John the Baptist, or that Percy, the half-human son of Poseidon, is divine, the larger prophecy does bespeak the coming of an important person, one who is born of both a human and one of the three major gods—Zeus, Poseidon, or Hades. By the end of that fourth tale, we're not even certain that Percy
is
the child of Chiron's prophecy. It could just as easily be Thalia (should she abandon Artemis's Hunters), or even, should Percy not make it to sixteen, Nico di Angelo, the son of Hades, whose very name conjures up a foreshadowing of death and angels. When we leave Percy at the end of
The Battle of the Labyrinth,
he is barely fifteen, and if he is indeed
the one,
we won't know it for another year and another book.

What we do know, however, is that Percy will play an integral role in the battle that is sure to come. In fact, Riordan uses prophecies throughout the series, in both large ways and small.

Who among us isn't fascinated by the prospect of learning the future? Think about Genesis: Eve's transgressions were as much a result of temptation and curiosity as they were of inquiry. There is now and always has been an entire underground industry in fortunetellers, palmists, and psychics.

But there's a dark side to learning the future too. The future can be terrifying. And even when it isn't, having the knowledge of it is still a serious, often scary thing. Once you know something, you can't go back to not knowing it.

It's appropriate, I think, that a tree marks the border to Camp Half-Blood. Just as the tree in the Garden of Eden signifies knowledge,
so too does the tree that stands at the entry to the camp. Once Percy discovers who he is and what is at stake for him, that knowledge seals the deal: He can't return to his prior innocence any more than Adam and Eve could return to theirs.

As well, it's no coincidence that the mist that surrounds the Oracle in the attic of Camp Half-Blood takes on the shape of a snake, “a huge green serpent . . . slithering back into the mouth of the mummy.” The ancient Oracle at Delphi was known as Pythia, named for the great dragon that was slain by Apollo. The giver of prophecies—whether it's the mummy in the attic or the serpent in Eden—often dons the guise of something to be feared. Even in our popular games, the notion of prophesying takes on an ominous look. The triangular form of the popular Ouija board disc, after all, is the same shape as the head of a poisonous snake. (It's worth noting that it's also a “tripod,” similar to the three-legged bench upon which the Oracle sat.)

The message is clear: Knowledge, especially the kind that comes from prophecy, is a very serious thing indeed.

The most obvious prophecies in the Percy Jackson series come from that musty old Oracle in the attic. We can assume that she's either the direct descendant of one of the original Oracles, or more likely she's one of the actual Oracles who has survived in freeze-dried condition. In Ancient Greece, the Oracle of Delphi was a kind of “channeler,” typically a young priestess who received her information from the gods and then passed it on to a priest, who in turn shared it with whomever had come looking for an answer. According to Heraclitus (circa 500 B.C.E.), as related by Ron Lead-better in the
Encyclopedia Mythica
, “the oracle neither concealed nor revealed the truth, but only hinted at it.” In effect, the offering from the oracle was usually a puzzle, something to be unraveled and figured out by the recipient.

The Oracle as portrayed in Riordan's stories is anything but a beautiful priestess perched on a tall stool. Instead, she appears as a mummified corpse and is described as looking like “death warmed over.” She's not a reassuring motherly type, but her very age endows her with authority. And she lives right in the center of Camp Half-Blood.

Interestingly, according to legend, the site of the Oracle was known as the
omphalos
, which literally means “navel of the world.” Camp Half-Blood, with its ability to protect its young, serves as a kind of central secure womb, at least for a little while. It's as safe as my mother's kitchen, but the connection to the outside world and what awaits the campers beyond its boundaries, the Oracle, resides in their midst. Right there in the attic. She's the belly button.

It's this figure that Riordan taps in order to offer up a prophecy for each of the three quests that Percy and his friends must embark upon. And in all three cases, Percy and his fellow sojourners use the different elements of her prophecies to guide their quests.

The first of the Oracle's prophecies is given to Percy himself. The quest is his to take.