The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)

‘I’m not dying here,’ Meg grumbled.

Her appearance said otherwise. She had bloody knuckles and skinned knees. Her green dress, a prized gift from Percy Jackson’s mother, looked like it had been used as a sabre-toothed tiger’s scratching post. She had ripped off her left legging and used it to staunch the bleeding cut on her thigh, but the fabric was already soaked through.

Nevertheless, her eyes shone defiantly. The rhinestones still glittered on the tips of her cat-eye glasses. I’d learned never to count out Meg McCaffrey while her rhinestones still glittered.

She rummaged through her seed packages, squinting at the labels. ‘Roses. Daffodils. Squash. Carrots.’

‘No …’ Grover bumped his fist against his forehead. ‘Arbutus is like … a flowering tree. Argh, I should know this.’

I sympathized with his memory problems. I should have known many things: the weaknesses of strixes, the nearest secret exit from the Labyrinth, Zeus’s private number so I could call him and plead for my life. But my mind was blank. My legs had begun to tremble – perhaps a sign I would soon be able to walk again – but this didn’t cheer me up. I had nowhere to go, except to choose whether I wanted to die at the top of this chamber or the bottom.

Meg kept shuffling seed packets. ‘Rutabaga, wisteria, pyracantha, strawberries –’

‘Strawberries!’ Grover yelped so loudly I thought he was trying for another blast of Panic. ‘That’s it! The arbutus is a strawberry tree!’

Meg frowned. ‘Strawberries don’t grow on trees. They’re genus Fragaria, part of the rose family.’

‘Yes, yes, I know!’ Grover rolled his hands like he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. ‘And arbutus is in the heath family, but –’

‘What are you two talking about?’ I demanded. I wondered if they were sharing the Arrow of Dodona’s Wi-Fi connection to look up information on botany.com. ‘We’re about to die, and you’re arguing about plant genera?’

‘Fragaria might be close enough!’ Grover insisted. ‘Arbutus fruit looks like strawberries. That’s why it’s called a strawberry tree. I met an arbutus dryad once. We got in this big argument about it. Besides, I specialize in strawberry-growing. All the satyrs from Camp Half-Blood do!’

Meg stared doubtfully at her packet of strawberry seeds. ‘I dunno.’

Below us, a dozen strixes burst forth from the mouth of the tunnel, shrieking in a chorus of pre-disembowelment fury.

‘TRY THE FRAGGLE ROCK!’ I yelled.

‘Fragaria,’ Meg corrected.

‘WHATEVER!’

Rather than throwing her strawberry seeds into the void, Meg ripped open the packet and shook them out along the edge of the ramp with maddening slowness.

‘Hurry.’ I fumbled for my bow. ‘We’ve got maybe thirty seconds.’

‘Hold on.’ Meg tapped out the last of the seeds.

‘Fifteen seconds!’

‘Wait.’ Meg tossed aside the packet. She placed her hands over the seeds like she was about to play the keyboard (which, by the way, she can’t do well, despite my efforts to teach her).

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Go.’

Grover raised his pipes and began a frantic version of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ in triple time. I forgot about my bow and grabbed my ukulele, joining him in the song. I didn’t know if it would help, but, if I was going to get ripped apart, at least I wanted to go out playing the Beatles.

Just as the wave of strixes was about to hit, the seeds exploded like a battery of fireworks. Green streamers arced across the void, anchoring against the far wall and forming a row of vines that reminded me of the strings of a giant lute. The strixes could have easily flown through the gaps, but instead they went crazy, veering to avoid the plants and colliding with each other in mid-air.

Meanwhile, the vines thickened, leaves unfurled, white flowers bloomed and strawberries ripened, filling the air with their sweet fragrance.

The chamber rumbled. Wherever the strawberry plants touched the stone, the brick cracked and dissolved, giving the strawberries an easier place to root.

Meg lifted her hands from her imaginary keyboard. ‘Is the Labyrinth … helping?’

‘I don’t know!’ I said, strumming furiously on an F minor 7. ‘But don’t stop!’

With impossible speed, the strawberries spread across the walls in a tide of green.

I was just thinking, Wow, imagine what the plants could do with sunlight! when the domed ceiling cracked like an eggshell. Brilliant rays stabbed through the darkness. Chunks of rock rained down, smashing into the birds, punching through strawberry vines (which, unlike the strixes, grew back almost immediately).

As soon as the sunlight hit the birds, they screamed and dissolved into dust.

Grover lowered his panpipes. I set down my ukulele. We watched in amazement as the plants continued to grow, interlacing until a strawberry-runner trampoline stretched across the entire area of the room at our feet.

The ceiling had disintegrated, revealing a brilliant blue sky. Hot dry air wafted down like the breath from an open oven.

Grover raised his face to the light. He sniffled, tears glistening on his cheeks.

‘Are you hurt?’ I asked.

He stared at me. The heartbreak on his face was more painful to look at than the sunlight.

‘The smell of warm strawberries,’ he said. ‘Like Camp Half-Blood. It’s been so long …’

I felt an unfamiliar twinge in my chest. I patted Grover’s knee. I had not spent much time at Camp Half-Blood, the training ground for Greek demigods on Long Island, but I understood how he felt. I wondered how my children were doing there: Kayla, Will, Austin. I remembered sitting with them at the campfire, singing ‘My Mother Was a Minotaur’ as we ate burnt marshmallows off a stick. Such perfect camaraderie is rare, even in an immortal life.

Meg leaned against the wall. Her complexion was pasty, her breathing ragged.

I dug through my pockets and found a broken square of ambrosia in a napkin. I did not keep the stuff for myself. In my mortal state, eating the food of the gods might cause me to spontaneously combust. But Meg, I had found, was not always good about taking her ambrosia.

‘Eat.’ I pressed the napkin into her hand. ‘It’ll help the paralysis pass more quickly.’

She clenched her jaw, as if about to yell, I DON’T WANNA!, then apparently decided she liked the idea of having working legs again. She began nibbling on the ambrosia.

‘What’s up there?’ she asked, frowning at the blue sky.

Grover brushed the tears from his face. ‘We’ve made it. The Labyrinth brought us right to our base.’

‘Our base?’ I was delighted to learn we had a base. I hoped that meant security, a soft bed and perhaps an espresso machine.

‘Yeah.’ Grover swallowed nervously. ‘Assuming anything is left of it. Let’s find out.’





4


Welcome to my base

We have rocks, sand and ruins

Did I mention rocks?





They tell me I reached the surface.

I don’t remember.

Meg was partially paralysed, and Grover had already carried me halfway up the ramp, so it seems wrong that I was the one who passed out, but what can I say? That Fm7 chord on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ must have taken more out of me than I realized.

I do remember feverish dreams.

Before me rose a graceful olive-skinned woman, her long auburn hair gathered up in a doughnut braid, her sleeveless dress as light and grey as moth’s wings. She looked about twenty, but her eyes were black pearls – their hard lustre formed over centuries, a defensive shell hiding untold sorrow and disappointment. They were the eyes of an immortal who had seen great civilizations fall.

We stood together on a stone platform, at the edge of what looked like an indoor swimming pool filled with lava. The air shimmered with heat. Ashes stung my eyes.

The woman raised her arms in a supplicating gesture. Glowing red iron cuffs shackled her wrists. Molten chains anchored her to the platform, though the hot metal did not seem to burn her.