The first thing Percy did when he woke up was seek out Rosie. He found her practicing her archery, and the words exploded out of his mouth in an instant.
"Percy?" Grover said. "Please, I don't have the strength to project any better. You have to hear me!"
"I hear you," I said. "Grover, what's going on?"
From behind the boulder, a monstrous voice yelled, "Honeypie! Are you done yet?"
Grover flinched. He called out in falsetto, "Not quite, dearest! A few more days!"
"Bah! Hasn't it been two weeks yet?"
"N-no, dearest. Just five days. That leaves twelve more to go."
The monster was silent, maybe trying to do the math. He must've been worse at arithmetic than I was, because he said, "All right, but hurry! I want to SEEEEE under that veil, heh-heh-heh."
Grover turned back to me. "You have to help me! No time! I'm stuck in this cave. On an island in the sea."
"Where?"
"I don't know exactly! I went to Florida and turned left."
"What? How did you—"
"It's a trap!" Grover said. "It's the reason no satyr has ever returned from this quest. He's a shepherd, Percy! And he has it. Its nature magic is so powerful it smells just like the great god Pan! The satyrs come here thinking they've found Pan, and they get trapped and eaten by Polyphemus!"
Percy sank to the ground and panted. From his place in the dirt, he looked to Rosie nervously. She'd given him her full attention when he began recalling his dream, but her face was blank.
"I know it sounds crazy, okay?" Percy whispered. "But it was real."
"After everything we've been through, I believe you, Percy," Rosie sighed. "That's the problem."
"We have to save him."
"The Sea of Monsters is serious. Give me some time to think, and we can make a plan. Don't do anything stupid before then."
"Yeah, okay," Percy nodded. While he was itching to do something right then, it eased his restlessness to know Rosie was with him.
-
Before the chariot race began later that day, Percy tried to approach Annabeth and tell her about his dream. She perked up when he mentioned Grover, but when Percy told her what he'd said, she seemed to get distant again, suspicious.
"You're trying to distract me," she decided.
"What? No, I'm not!"
"Oh, right! Like Grover would just happen to stumble across the one thing that could save the camp."
"What do you mean?"
She rolled her eyes. "Go back to your chariot, Percy."
Across the track, he could see Rosie and Clarisse prepping their chariot. His red-haired friend looked up and caught his eye, giving him a nod. Her eyes then flitted to some pigeons in the trees around them, and her jaw clenched.
It was as good a sign as any thay something was wrong.
"Charioteers!" Tantalus called. "To your mark!"
Percy found his way to Tyson, having to convince their horses to allow the cyclops boy to ride in the chariot. Tantalus called for everyone to get set, then he waved his hand and the starting signal dropped.
The chariots roared to life. Hooves thundered against the dirt. The crowd cheered. Almost immediately there was a loud nasty crack!
Percy looked back in time to see the Apollo chariot flip over. The Hermes chariot had rammed into it—maybe by mistake, maybe not. The riders were thrown free, but their panicked horses dragged the golden chariot diagonally across the track. The Hermes team,
Travis and Connor Stoll, were laughing at their good luck, but not for long. The Apollo horses crashed into theirs, and the Hermes chariot flipped too, leaving a pile of broken wood and four rearing horses in the dust.
The boys were making good time, pulling ahead of Ares, but Annabeth's chariot was way ahead of them. She was already making her turn around the first post, her javelin man grinning and waving at them, shouting: "See ya!"
The Hephaestus chariot was starting to gain on them, too. Beckendorf pressed a button, and a panel slid open on the side of his chariot. "Sorry, Percy!" he yelled. Three sets of balls and chains shot straight toward their wheels.
They would've wrecked them completely if Tyson hadn't whacked them aside with a quick swipe of his pole. He gave the Hephaestus chariot a good shove and sent them skittering sideways while we pulled ahead.
"Nice work, Tyson!" Percy yelled.
"Birds!" he cried.
"What?"
The half-brothers were whipping along so fast it was hard to hear or see anything, but Tyson pointed toward the woods and Percy saw what he was worried about. The pigeons had risen from the trees. They were spiraling like a huge tornado, heading toward the track.
Annabeth's fighter wasn't smiling now, as Percy caught up to them. He pulled a javelin from his collection and took aim at Percy. He was about to throw when they heard the screaming.
The pigeons were swarming—thousands of them dive-bombing the spectators in the stands, attacking the other chariots. Beckendorf was mobbed. His fighter tried to bat the birds away but he couldn't see anything. The chariot veered off course and plowed through the strawberry fields, the mechanical horses steaming.
In the Ares chariot, Clarisse barked an order to Rosie, who was on as her fighter. She quickly threw a screen of camouflage netting over their basket. The birds swarmed around it, pecking and clawing at the the girl's hands as she tried to hold up the net, but Clarisse just gritted her teeth and kept driving.
Percy's heart thundered in his chest as he watched the birds continue to attack Rosie. She and Clarisse were shouting back and forth, but he couldn't hear what they were saying.
The skeletal horses of their chariot seemed immune to the distraction. The pigeons pecked uselessly at their empty eye sockets and flew through their rib cages, but the stallions kept right on running.
"Stymphalian birds!" Annabeth yelled. She slowed down and pulled her chariot alongside Percy's. "They'll strip everyone to bones if we don't drive them away!"
"Tyson," Percy said, "we're turning around!"
"Going the wrong way?" he asked.
"Always," Percy grumbled, but he steered the chariot toward the stands. Annabeth rode right next to them. She shouted, "Heroes, to arms!" But he wasn't sure anyone could hear her over the screeching of the birds and the general chaos.
Clarisse has just pulled across the finish line, completely unopposed, and seemed to notice for the first time how serious the bird problem was. Some of the spectators were trying to fight back. The Athena campers were calling for shields. The archers from Apollo's cabin brought out their bows and arrows, ready to slay the menace, but with so many campers mixed in with the birds, it wasn't safe to shoot.
Annabeth was now in Percy's chariot, making their way to the Big House in search of something that could make enough noise to scare away the birds.
"You're running? The fight is here, cowards!" Clarisse shouted, as she drew her sword and charged for the stands.
"I told you!" Rosie snarked loudly, following after the daughter of Ares.
Percy and Annabeth rushed to the Big House and retrieved Chiron's boombox. Taking it back to the finish line of the abandoned race, he pressed play.
The birds were distracted by the noise, allowing the archers to pick them out of the sky. The chaos died down, allowing Percy to see that nearly everyone was wounded and every chariot was smashed.
"Bravo!" Tantalus said, but he wasn't looking at Percy or Annabeth. "We have our first winner!" He walked to the finish line and awarded the golden laurels for the race to a stunned-looking Clarisse and a furious Rosalyn.
Then he turned and smiled at Percy.
"And now to punish the troublemakers who disrupted this race."