Running the Gauntlet

My friend and I hold off an army

Garden

The next few days I settled into a routine that felt almost normal, if you don't count the fact that I was getting lessons from satyrs, nymphs, and a centaur.

Each morning Percy and I took Ancient Greek from Annabeth, and we talked about the gods and goddesses in the present tense, which was kind of weird. I discovered Annabeth was right about our dyslexia: Ancient Greek wasn't that hard for me to read. At least, no harder than Russian.

The rest of the day, I'd rotate through outdoor activi-ties with Percy, looking for something we were good at. Chiron tried to teach us archery, but we found out pretty quickly we weren't any good with a bow and arrow. He didn't complain, even when he had to desnag a stray arrow out of his tail because of Percy. I laughed a bit though.

I was alright in foot racing, almost as fast as the wood nymphs, Percy unfortunately didn't do as well. But I told him not to work on it. We all started from somewhere.

Now wrestling was my bread and butter. I beat Clarisse again, and then almost nobody wanted to wrestle me, which hurt. I needed to get better at that. So I asked Clarisse if she wanted to spar some more since and I hate to admit it, she'd be an okay partner.

But boy I was horrible at canoeing. I just couldn't get the rhythm right. I'm not sure I'll have to work on that. But Percy, he was doing it like a natural, it was impressive.

The senior counselors and campers were trying to guess who Percy and my godly parent was. But I don't think they were having an easy time. A lot of them said maybe Ares was my dad considering I was good at fighting. It wasn't Apollo, it probably wasn't Hephaestus because I couldn't work with metal well, some considered Dionysus or Demeter because of the way I am with plants, I hope the former isn't true. Luke thinks that Percy might be a child of Hermes, kind of a jack of all trades and master of none. But I'm pretty sure he was trying to make him feel better. I didn't know where Percy would fit.

Despite everything, I enjoyed the camp. I got used to the morn-ing fog over the beach, the smell of hot strawberry fields in the afternoon, and even the weird noises of monsters in the woods at night. I would eat dinner with cabin eleven, scrape part of my meal into the fire, and try and feel a connection to my parent. Nothing came.

I kinda understand where Luke was coming from with his bitterness. The gods all had jobs to do, but they could do something.

Thursday afternoon, three days after Percy and I arrived at Camp Half-Blood, we had my first sword-fighting lesson. Every-body from cabin eleven gathered in the big circular arena, where Luke would be our instructor.

We started with the basics, stabbing slashing. It felt foreign to me. I had only ever fought with my fists and gauntlets. But I did alright, I had good reflexes.

Percy also looked uncomfortable with the swords and Luke being the nice guy he is, tried to help him, but the two of them agreed that none of them fit him.

We moved on to dueling in pairs. Luke announced he would be Percy's partner, since this was his first time.

"Good luck," one of the campers told him. "Luke's the best swordsman in the last three hundred years."

"Percy you've got this, just do your best." I encouraged him.

He nodded at me with a smile.