The Demigods of Olympus: An Interactive Adventure (9 page)

“Thanks,” said Sam.

“No problem,” said Eleos, then climbed into his cart and zoomed off.

“Never gonna think about meter maids the same way again,” I muttered.

“We need to go,” said Sam. “Now: Stick to the woods and try to jump the river, or fix the bridge?”

“Food,” Sam gasped. “Need…food.”

I glanced at the diner’s clock and rolled my eyes. “Be patient. We only ordered five minutes ago.”

Sam and I had arrived in Austin, Texas, half an hour earlier. We were tired and hungry. One of us—three guesses who—smelled like a goat. We’d bought a street map of the city and then made a beeline for the nearest restaurant, a tiny place called Xenia. I was dying for a steaming pepperoni pizza, but the menu was limited to BBQ, BBQ, and…more BBQ. When in Austin…

“Did you know that
xenia
is ancient Greek for hospitality?” Sam commented.

To my surprise, I
did
. Though why I knew an ancient Greek word was a mystery to me.

I unfolded the map and smoothed it out on the table. “So this is where we are,” I said, pointing to a small dot. “And I think we need to go here.” I tapped a second, smaller dot marked
Barton Springs Pool
.

Getting to Austin had taken us a while, since instant teleportation was apparently not one of my demigod powers. Instead, we’d taken the bus.

We couldn’t even take a direct route to Austin. Sam insisted we zigzag around.

“To throw other monsters off our trail,” he’d said.

“What other monsters?”

He’d rattled off a long list, complete with colorful descriptions. Each sounded more deadly than the one before it. I’d waved my hands to stop him. “Okay, I get it. Zigzag it is.”

During the bus ride, our only sustenance was stuff we’d scored from vending machines—a bag of chips, a sleeve of cookies, a bottle of soda. I ate the food. Sam wolfed down the wrappers and the plastic bottle.

“Do you always eat trash?” I’d asked, more curious than disgusted.

“You think what’s inside the packaging is any better?”

He had a point. Some of those ingredients sounded as deadly as the monsters.

The rest of our journey was uneventful…mostly.
While I was in the restroom at the back of the bus, the hand sanitizer dispenser exploded. At one stop, I put a quarter in a pinball machine and the thing started dinging, flashing, and smoking like it was having a nervous breakdown. (I barely touched it, I swear!) I also had a little misunderstanding with a dog walker and a flower vendor. The less said about that, the better.

Then there was that weird flash of light in the sky, but that was probably just a reflection off a car or something.

Yeah. I’m going with reflection.

Oh, and there was this really weird thing with the sword I’d picked up in the library. Sam kept insisting that we needed to keep it with us for protection. I kept insisting that we were going to end up in jail.

I waved it in Sam’s face. “How
exactly
do you travel in public with an enormous bronze sword?” Then
bam!
Instead of a sword, I was holding a fold-up travel toothbrush. I stared at it, then shoved it into my backpack. It didn’t make sense, but I was learning that being a demigod meant having to expect the unexpected.

“Here you go, young’uns.” Our waitress had a Texas twang, a wide smile, and a name tag that read
B
. She set down our meals—a pile of lettuce for Sam and a BBQ sandwich with a mound of steak fries for me.

She came back with two tall glasses of sweet tea and nodded at our map. “First time in Austin?”

Sam gave a nervous bleat. I remembered then that he’d been in Austin before. He’d implied that things hadn’t gone well, but he’d refused to give me any details.

“Yes, ma’am,” I answered. “We’re trying to get to the Barton Springs Pool.”

“That’s in Zilker Park. There’s a bus that goes there via the Congress Avenue Bridge. Or you could take a taxi, if you’ve got the money.” She eyed our clothes and backpacks as if she doubted that was an option. “Or you could walk. It’s not too far.” She took a pencil out of her apron pocket and traced a route on our map.

“B!” the cook called from the kitchen. “Order up!”

“Coming, Phil!” The waitress tucked away her pencil. “You kids want anything else, just holler, you hear? By the way, unlimited free refills on drinks!” She trundled off.

Sam stared after her. “This may sound far-fetched, but you remember how I said
xenia
was Greek for hospitality?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, there’s this old story…Zeus and Hermes disguised themselves as humans and visited different people to see who would give them shelter. A bunch of rich folks turned them away. Then they came to an old, poor couple. This couple had nothing, but they welcomed the gods with open arms. As a reward, the gods enchanted the couple’s pitcher so it would never be empty.”

“So?”

“So,” Sam said, “the old woman’s name was
Baucis
. The man’s was
Philemon
.”

It took me a moment to catch on. “You think B is Baucis, and Phil the cook is Philemon?”

I stared at the waitress and the cook. I tried to imagine they were thousands of years old—characters from Greek mythology. I wasn’t good at guessing adults’ ages, but they didn’t look
that
ancient.

“Not all the mythical beings you meet will be evil,” Sam said. “At least, I
hope
not. This place might be a refuge for demigods, in which case we got lucky. Or the names B and Phil could just be a coincidence. Still”—Sam lifted his tea—“unlimited free refills, you know?”

I decided not to argue. Sam forked more lettuce into his mouth. I dug into my sandwich.

“What do you think about getting to Zilker Park?” I asked. “Should we walk?”

Sam picked up a steak fry from the plate in the middle of the table. Ketchup dripped from the tip. He eyed it with distaste.

“Something wrong?” I asked.

“It kinda looks like a bloody finger, doesn’t it?” Sam returned the offending potato to the plate.

“Thanks, Sam,” I said. “You’re just full of good cheer.”

“Sorry. Austin freaks me out. The cannibals who live here—”

It was my turn to gag. “Whoa. Back up. Cannibals? As in people who
eat people
?”

I glanced around at the other patrons in the diner. They seemed normal enough. Then again, so had my guidance counselor before she turned into a lioness and tried to kill me. For all I knew, these Texans were munching on man-burgers with pickles and special sauce.

“No, not human cannibals,” Sam clarified. “Demon
satyrs
.”

“Oh, that’s much better.”

“A whole pack of them lives underneath the Congress Avenue Bridge. They attack and eat other satyrs if they get the chance.”

The pieces fell into place. “That’s why you hate Austin. The last time you were here, they almost made you into shish-ka-Sam.”

“Yeah. It happened while I was watching the bats.”

“Bats. Right. What?” I shuddered. I have a terrible phobia of rats that almost got us killed when we went to see Mnemosyne. I couldn’t imagine having to face
flying
rats.

“There’s a huge bat colony—hundreds of thousands of them. They live in the nooks beneath the bridge. People come from all over to watch them fly out at sunset. It’s pretty amazing, actually—an enormous fluttering black cloud that covers the sky. And the gossip you can get from that many bats—”

I cut him off, desperately trying not to freak out. “You speak bat?”

He looked at me blankly. “Of course. Anyway, I was so busy watching the bats I didn’t see this demon satyr. He snuck up on me from behind a group of camera-toting tourists. Once I noticed him”—he swallowed hard—“I knew I was in big trouble. Red slits for eyes, no pupils. Hot, foul breath, like week-old roadkill rotting in the sun. Fangs and blood-splotched fur. Definitely a meat-eater. And the dude was
huge
. If satyrs were candy bars, he’d be king-size to my fun-size.” He rubbed his face with his hands as if to wash away the image. “Honestly, I thought I was a goner.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. And I kept running until…” He paused, embarrassment clouding his face.

“Until what?”

“I tripped, okay? It was humiliating. I mean, I’m a satyr. We’re known for being nimble, and there I am, tripping over my own hooves. To make matters worse, I fell into a street vendor’s cart.” He shook his head in self-disgust. “The vendor was giving out free samples of tea. The little paper cups flew everywhere. Anyone standing nearby got showered.”

“What happened to the satyr?”

Sam scratched his head. “I’m not sure. I heard him bellow once. Maybe he was laughing at me. Maybe he was frustrated because I’d gotten the attention of so many witnesses. When I looked back, he had vanished. I vanished, too. Got the heck out of Austin as soon as I could. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to death. I still have nightmares. I—I swore I’d never come back here.”

Guilt washed over me. “But now, thanks to me, you’re here again.”

Sam reached across the table and grabbed my hand. “Listen carefully, because I’m only going to say this once. I am your
protector.
Where you go, I go. End of story. Got it?”

I held his gaze. “I got it. But that’s not the end of the story. You may be my protector, but you’re also my best friend. You have my back; I have yours. Okay?”

Sam hesitated, then nodded. “I suppose I can live with that.”

“Good. Then here’s the plan.”

“We’re gonna walk. We’ll avoid the Congress Avenue Cannibal Satyr Bridge and follow a different route to the Barton Springs Pool. We’ll get answers from this river god, Barton. Then we’ll get out of Austin. Problem solved.”

I tried to sound confident. Maybe staying away from the bridge would keep Sam safe. Maybe it wouldn’t. How did I know? I was still learning the rules of the demigod world. But right now, my number one rule was making sure Sam didn’t end up as the main course on the demon satyr menu.

Our route to Zilker Park took us through this massive college campus that Sam told me was the University of Texas. For a college campus, it was eerily quiet, but we figured that had something to do with the “Game Day” and “Hook ’em Horns” signs everywhere.

“Must be a football game,” Sam said.

“Or they’ve all gone fishing…”

Since it was about a million degrees outside, we stopped to rest at a three-tiered fountain with a big bronze statue in the middle. A winged lady in flowing robes held aloft a burning torch in one hand and a bunch of laurel leaves in the other. She stood in a chariot drawn by three fish-tailed horses. Bronze pointy-eared dudes rode the horses bareback. (Actually, just about everything about the dudes was bare.)

“Let me guess,” I said. “More Greek stuff?”

Sam shrugged. “Sort of. This is the Littlefield Fountain. Those half-horse, half-fish creatures are hippocampi. They’re pretty friendly.”

I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that half-horse, half-fish creatures could be real, much less friendly. “And the woman there is a goddess?”

Sam seesawed his hand. “Technically, no. She’s Columbia. She was the symbol of American independence until ol’ Libertas planted herself in New York Harbor.”

Right behind me, I heard an indignant
hrumph
. I turned, but no one was there. Sam and I were alone by the fountain. Sam didn’t look like he’d heard anything. I decided I must’ve imagined it.

“Libertas,” I said. “Uh, you mean the Statue of Liberty?”

“Yeah. Little known fact: the Statue of Liberty doesn’t
represent
the Roman goddess of liberty. She
is
the Roman goddess of liberty.”

I blinked. “Wait, you mean—”

“Yep.”

“—that huge green statue is a living, breathing—”

“Well, I don’t know about breathing. But living? Yeah. Green Girl is an actual goddess. Got herself an island right outside the most powerful city in America, where she can keep an eye on things. After that happened, the old symbol of liberty, Columbia, kind of faded from the scene.”

I looked at the bronze plaque affixed to the fountain. “
Brevis a natura nobis.
That’s Latin, right?”

Sam nodded. “Can you translate it?” His tone was casual, but his expression was intense, as if my answer mattered.

“I don’t have to. It’s written in English right here:
A short life hath been given by Nature unto man
,” I recited.
“But the remembrance of a life laid down in a good cause endureth forever.”

“Mmm.” Sam focused on clouds. “I wouldn’t mind my life being remembered forever. Dying for a good cause.”

“Yeah,” I replied. “But in the meantime, if we could avoid making our short lives even shorter—”

“That would be good,” he agreed.

I studied the bronze face of Columbia, the retired not-quite-goddess of liberty. I had a feeling there was something important about the statue…something I wasn’t quite getting, but I decided it was time to keep moving.

When we finally arrived at Zilker Park, we wove through hordes of sunbathers and picnickers to get to the central attraction. Barton Springs Pool was gigantic—a thousand feet long and about one hundred fifty feet wide. According to one sign, it was more than eighteen feet deep in some places. Concrete walkways stretched the pool’s length, with stairs leading into the water, but the bottom of the pool looked more like a riverbed, with mossy rocks and even some fish swimming around. The whole area was surrounded by grassy slopes and shade trees.

Seeing all that sparkling clear water reminded me of how grubby I felt.