Demigods and Monsters (19 page)

Sure enough, the prophecy comes true, albeit in some surprising ways, particularly the part about being betrayed by “one who calls you friend.” And this is an integral part of prophecies—they're not always what they seem on the surface. Back in the old days, the most famous of the ancient Oracles' prophecies was given to King Croesus of Lydia. When he asked her whether he should go to battle against the Persians, the Oracle replied that if he did, a great empire would be destroyed. So, Croesus invaded. The thing is, it wasn't the Persians who were brought down. Rather, it was his own empire that was lost.

Percy's prophecy is filled with riddles too. The first two lines are easy enough to figure out. But the last two are more obtuse. On the
surface they seem obvious, but by the end of the tale, it's clear that they weren't exactly what they seemed. The last line especially appears to be the most ominous of all. What matters most to Percy—his mother—is also the one thing he can least afford to lose. By the end, we see that Percy does fail to save her; instead she saves herself, by mysteriously dispatching her brutish husband Gabe. “She'd reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him.”

As it turns out, it's not the fourth line that holds the most peril, it's the third. Until the very last chapter, Percy believes that it's Ares who is the traitor—the blustery god did pose as a friend, after all, and then turns his back. But in the very last chapter, the true traitor shows his face: Luke.

The very fact that Luke is a fellow camper and not one of the gods or even someone from Percy's human village makes him all the more menacing. And this holds true throughout the series, with Luke's power becoming increasingly stronger and more vengeful.

The quests in
The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse
, and
The Battle of the Labyrinth
are also dictated by the Oracle's prophecies. But even though Percy is a hero in these three adventures, the Oracle's prophecies are not given directly to him.

The second prophecy in
The Sea of Monsters
is actually delivered to Clarisse, the daughter of Ares. Clarisse, like her father, is enigmatic, half-friend and half-nemesis. She's strong, brave, and competitive—the perfect qualities for a warrior, not necessarily perfect qualities for a friend. But unlike the prophecy given to Percy in book one, Riordan doesn't share this prophecy until close to the very end of book two. Only Clarisse knows what the Oracle has told her:

By the time Percy discovers the prophecy, the first three lines have come to pass, so it's easy enough to figure out what they mean. It takes some brainwork to figure out what the last line means: Clarisse will have to take the Golden Fleece home by herself on a plane to Camp Half-Blood. The group does not have enough money to purchase more than one ticket.

As it did in
The Lightning Thief
, the Oracle's prophecy for
The Sea of Monsters
comes true. Just because this particular prophecy is not directly given to Percy, his combined experiences with the two prophecies allow him to trust in their efficacy. In this way, Riordan has infused the use of prophecy with reliability. While the meaning of the prophecy may not be clear at the outset, Percy can believe with some certainty that if he continues on his quest, the truth of the Oracle's messages will undoubtedly reveal itself.

By the time Percy gets to book three, the notion of prophecies and the power inherent in them are stronger than ever, which is both reassuring and terrifying. Here in our human world, for example, it's easy enough to shrug off our daily horoscope. But if that same horoscope continued to hold true day after day for an extended length of time, eventually we'd begin to trust that whatever it offered was going to occur, good or bad. It's no different with Percy. As each adventure unfolds, Percy can see that the words of the Oracle can be depended upon, even though he may not know what they mean at first. Ominous or not, confusing and strange, he can rely upon them to become true.

In
The Titan's Curse
, the Oracle again gives the prophecy to someone other than Percy. This time it's granted to Zoë Nightshade, Artemis's most faithful huntress.

The prophecy in
The Battle of the Labyrinth
is given to Annabeth and is more enigmatic, a reflection of both Percy and Annabeth's increasing maturity and ability to analyze the Oracle's elusive meanings.

But just as Clarisse withholds her prophecy in the
Sea of Monsters
until the very end, Annabeth maintains claim to the final line of her prophecy until the close of
The Battle of the Labyrinth.
Her reasons are more personal than Clarisse's, however, and Percy, in his widening awareness of the power of prophecy, realizes that Annabeth's reasons for the secret are much deeper and more intimate than anything he has previously encountered. When Annabeth reveals that final line
“. . . And lose a love to worse than death
,” its impact is powerful because it also reveals the depth of Annabeth's twin feelings of love for and sorrow over Luke. All at once, Percy realizes that Annabeth has gone to a place where he cannot go with her, a place filled with her own memories—memories that have nothing to do with Percy and their blossoming relationship. And at that moment Percy's own sense of loss is equally profound.

Just as the second prophecy is direr than the first, and the third is more menacing than the second, the fourth trumps everything to date, not because the physical challenges are greater, but because the emotional risks are so much higher. By the time the fourth prophecy rolls around, Percy takes it at face value. He knows with certainty that they will unfold, just as the Oracle predicted.

In all four of these tales, the Oracle is true. The prophecies that she espouses come to pass. And with each one, Percy comes to
understand something more about prophecies themselves. In the first, he discovers their riddle-like nature; their face value is often misleading, hiding something underneath that same face. Because of this, Percy learns something about making assumptions. It isn't Ares who betrays him; it's Luke.

Nevertheless, by the time the second and third prophecies come to pass, the main thing that Percy has learned is that they are reliable. Which means that the prophecy about a child of the Big Three, whether it's about Percy or not, will come true too.

But the Oracle's prophecies are not the only ones guiding Percy Jackson. Recall that in both
The Sea of Monsters
and
The Titan's Curse
the prophecies pronounced by the mummy in the attic were not given to Percy. Nevertheless, prophecy was at play. Only in these tales, it showed up in the form of dreams. But are dreams the same as prophecies?

I think that Riordan's Apollo would agree with me: “‘If it weren't for dreams,' he said, ‘I wouldn't know half the things I know about the future. They're better than Olympus tabloids.'”

In fact,
The Sea of Monsters
begins with Percy's nightmare, one that features his best friend Grover draped in a wedding dress and desperately trying to escape from . . . something.

Later, Riordan expands the dream so that it becomes a form of communication between Percy and Grover. He calls it “an empathy link.” Does it seem far-fetched to presume that two friends like Percy and Grover could talk to each other through dreams? Perhaps. But one of the hallmarks of any good work of fantasy is the author's ability to ground that work in reality. For a fictional work to
work
, we must be able to empathize with the main character, regardless of how nonhuman that character may be. Any of us who have had a dream of warning can believe that the same could happen for Percy too. Who among us hasn't had that “naked on the school bus”
dream? Or the one about showing up in our classroom for a test and not being able to remember a single answer?

We can take these as warnings: Get up in time to get dressed and study harder for the test.

Percy's dreams of Grover are a warning too: Get there or risk losing your friend forever.

The prophecy given by the Oracle in book two is Clarisse's, and it is integral to her journey to recover the Golden Fleece. Percy is along to help, but his own quest is to rescue Grover. Percy's prophecy comes from his dream, not from the Oracle.

In
The Titan's Curse
, Percy's prophecy appears in the form of dream again. And again, the dream is about a close friend: Annabeth. But unlike the comfortable relationship that Percy shares with Grover, his feelings about Annabeth are more complex. In this case, he did not share the “empathy link” that allowed for communication. No, this time it is left to Percy to figure out the meaning on his own, which he does.

And it's a good thing, too, because in
The Battle of the Labyrinth
Percy's dreams are not about his friends, but rather those he will soon encounter, namely Daedalus and his arch-enemy King Minos. Percy's dreams in this volume serve as both prophecy and history lesson, preparing Percy for the meeting we know is coming, but they also allow him to use his increasing maturity to see the complexities that underlie human (and godly) actions and decisions.

I think it's important to note that Percy's dreams are no less puzzling than the prophecies issued by the Oracle. He still has to learn to interpret them. They do, however, provide a more personal look at the way that Percy operates, especially in terms of his relationships with his fellow campers. The dreams are his alone.

Boiled down, Riordan uses the Oracle for public prophecy and Percy's dreams for private prophecy. The former serves to illuminate the larger, global challenges for Percy and his friends. The latter allow us to get to know Percy at a more intimate level. A person who
dreams of his friends, who recognizes through those dreams that his companions need him, is a person we can pull for.

But where does Percy's loyalty come from? To answer that, we have to go back to our early glimpses of Percy. And we find out through them that Percy has, in a way, always been a child of prophecy.

When we first meet him, we discover that by the age of twelve, he's already been put on probation for misbehavior resulting from his inability to sit still, a product of his ADHD, and he's about to be faced with the challenge of a field trip. Nothing has ever gone right on the field trips that Percy has taken before. Why should it be any different this time? The headmaster has threatened him “with death by in-school suspension if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.” It doesn't take an oracle to see the writing on the wall. Percy is bound for trouble. No ifs, ands, or buts. Because he himself believes that he can't avoid trouble, or that trouble can't avoid him, he is the perpetual victim of what is known as a “selffulfilling prophecy.” He sees himself as the source of trouble and so becomes the source of trouble. Trouble seems to single him out.

His inability to concentrate and control his reactions have made it pretty much impossible for him to function in a regular school, and so he's enrolled in Yancy Academy, “the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.” And now he's about to be kicked out of there as well. His success—or lack of it—in school is a foregone conclusion. A prophecy.