Andy Jackson: Child of Land & Sea

A Safe Place

Act I — Storm At Sea

Part II — Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one summer camp hold?

The gods existed. That's what they were trying to convince her of. The gods existed, they were out there watching over people. The gods were out there watching over people and yet none of them had lifted a finger to save Andy's mom. Sally was dead, gone, vaporized into smoke by a monster that couldn't be real. Andy's head was spinning and they just wouldn't stop talking about the damn gods!

Andy, her mother and Grover had been followed by an enormous beast, half bull half man. Sally had called it Pasiphae's son or whatever, but the only word going through Andy's mind had been Minotaur. Only they wouldn't let her say it out loud. Andy didn't know what to do, what to think. There was a mythical creature following them, trying to kill them, her best friend was a goat—okay, a satyr, as he patiently explained—and her mother seemed to find everything about that situation quite normal. Sally even admitted to have expected such an attack.

Then the bull-man grunted, pawing the ground and charged toward them. Andy could still feel the earth moving under her feet. She could still smell the rotten meat that exhaled from it. But the fear couldn't compare to the feeling of emptiness of when the monster grabbed her mother and turned her to dust.

Andy had lost her mind then. She had attacked the monster with all her might. And somehow, she had managed to destroy it.

After several days in some sort of coma, Andy woke up to find out that none of that had been a dream. It had all happened. Grover told her she was in Camp Half-Blood, a safe place, the place her father had wanted to send her to. The place Sally didn't want her to go to.

Grover took her to the Great House where Andy was introduced to none other than her former Latin teacher, Mr. Brunner, only now he was a centaur going by the name of Chiron.

As if that wasn't weird enough, Andy was forced to sit down for a game of pinochle with the camp's director, Mr. D, also known as Dionysus, son of Zeus, etc etc. Andy wanted to pass out to stop herself from hearing any more of their crazy-talk. They told her the gods existed, they kept repeating it, as if the more they said it the faster she would come to accept it. But Andy couldn't accept that, she found herself completely unable to. Too much craziness and not enough time to process it.

The god of wine apparently had been banished to care for Camp Half-Blood because of a wood nymph he hadn't been able to stay away from. Nothing new there. Boys will be (stupid) boys. His father had declared her off limits, but that wasn't enough to stop Dionysus who was now forced to stay here, forbidden to have a sip of wine.

Then they told her the gods of Olympus were now here in America. They gave her a perfectly good explanation that Andy barely heard. And after that, Chiron invited her for a tour which Andy thought was a terrible idea, since every single one of the other campers kept staring at her and whispering. Most of them were older than Andy and their satyr friends were bigger than Grover. They all wore the same orange CAMP HALF-BLOOD T-shirt. Andy wasn't shy, but the way they stared made her feel extremely uncomfortable. Trying to take off the edge she was feeling, she asked Chiron about Grover.

"He has big dreams," Chiron told her. "Perhaps bigger than are reasonable. To reach his goal, he must first demonstrate great courage by succeeding as a keeper, finding a new camper and bringing him safely to Half-Blood Hill."

"But he did that."

"I might agree with you," Chiron said. "But it is not my place to judge. Dionysus and the Council of Cloven Elders must decide. I'm afraid they might not see this assignment as a success. After all, Grover lost you in New York. Then there's the unfortunate... ah... fate of your mother. And the fact that Grover was unconscious when you dragged him over the property line. The Council might question whether this shows any courage on Grover's part."