Okay, There Might Be a Cure, but You’re Not Gonna Like It Actually, I couldn’t talk to polecats.
If I’d been logical about it, I would’ve left that job to Grover. But Grover was in no mood. He was too depressed about having toenails.
While he and Annabeth dragged the nymphs upstairs, I approached Gale as nonthreateningly as I could. That wasn’t easy with the floor cracking under my feet. My tentacles didn’t help, either. They lashed around as if they had minds of their own … which, come to think of it, octopus tentacles did. The ADHD part of my head-brain wondered if I could subcontract homework
assignments to my new arm-brains. No … bad Percy. Stay focused on the polecat.
“Hey, Gale.” I tried to sound casual, like we’d just run into each other at a coffee shop. “I don’t blame you for hiding up there. Last few days have been a lot, huh?”
Gale glared at me, probably thinking, Dude, you’re part octopus. Yes, that’s a lot.
“I want to—” I caught myself before I could say get you home. I remembered how that conversation had gone with Hecuba. “I want to free you from that chain. Then you can make up your own mind about what to do next.”
The room shook. The orange foam was seeping into the concrete foundation, opening fracture lines big enough to swallow a mustelid. More tendrils of goo crept up the walls, eating away at the bricks and mortar. A chunk of ceiling plaster the size of a dinner plate crashed next to my foot.
Gale hissed and backed into the air duct, but she could only get so far before she reached the end of her golden chain. Otherwise, I got the feeling she
would’ve been long gone.
“Gale, we don’t have much time ….” I flailed my tentacles in a calm and reasonable fashion. “I need your help. I know Phaedra said there’s no cure for that beast-breath stuff, but I’m betting you know an antidote.”
The polecat poked her nose out of the duct, like, Who, me?
“You don’t owe me anything,” I admitted. “But today I’ve seen what you can do with potions. You really are amazing.”
She puffed up her fur, then farted angrily.
“I know,” I said. “Hecate doesn’t give you enough credit. It’s like she’s forgotten you used to be something besides a cute furry pet.”
“BARK!” Exactly.
Wow … either I was starting to understand Polecat, or I was hallucinating from the six thousand magic chemicals in the air.
“I didn’t appreciate you before,” I said. “You have skills. That was the real reason Hecate turned you into a polecat, wasn’t it? Not the whole …
gassy problem. She was jealous that you were becoming too powerful.”
“BARK!” Obviously.
( Exactly and obviously sounded almost identical in Polecat, and yeah, I was definitely starting to hallucinate.)
“Now that I’ve got these”—I waved my rows of pink suckers—“I’m starting to understand how tough it must be. You have it even worse. Hecate made
sure you have no voice, no opposable thumbs, no way to brew potions on your own.”
A large crack zigzagged up the wall right next to Gale’s perch. That orange goo was powerful stuff. I wondered if my sock and shoe had somehow supercharged it—the perfect nutrients for a growing goo monster.
“Let’s make an antidote together,” I said. “It might work on you, too—if you
want to be human again. If not, no judgment. Show me what to do. But we have to brew the cure before this place falls down around our ears.”
Gale chittered, then bit her shackle in frustration.
“Of course I’ll free you first,” I said. “Then you can decide. You deserve to show your skills, but not like this … chained up and forced to work for a bunch of greedy perfume nymphs. Let’s make that antidote so it can help us all. When we get back to Hecate’s—”
Gale hissed. That witch!
“If you decide to go back,” I corrected myself, “I’ll make sure Hecate
understands your worth. We can get you your own lab, some assistants with opposable thumbs, whatever you want!”
Gale tilted her head. Why should I trust you?
“I’m not leaving without you,” I said. “So …”
I waved a tentacle at the crumbling laboratory. More cracks had appeared in the walls. The floor looked like a shattered, gooey sheet of glass. Soon,
we’d be buried under tons of rubble and fancy cologne.
Gale jumped to the nearest table. She presented her chain. “Great,” I said. “Just hold still ….”
It took a few tries to pick up my sword. Even with one human brain in my skull and a mini octopus brain in each of my eight arms, learning to
coordinate my tentacles wasn’t easy. Finally, I got a steady grip on the handle. I rested another tentacle on Gale’s back, and …
Shock. Dizziness. Pain.
Tentacles were sensory organs. I knew that, but this was nothing like human senses. I could smell Gale’s history. I could taste her emotions. An electrical
current passed between us, letting me hear every muscle in her body, every chemical washing through her brain, every memory painted by her neurons.
I saw a young woman in tattered brown robes. She carried a leather pack over one shoulder, loaded with medicinal plants, vials, salves, and scrolls. It was her life’s work—all she could salvage when the Colossians chased her out of their city. She struggled up a steep mountain path, occasionally stopping to grip her stomach, crying out in pain. Tears streaked her face, smearing the kohl around her eyes so she appeared to have a black mask.
Her intestines felt like they were filled with broken glass. The condition had been getting worse ever since Apamea, when Hecate had appeared in her dreams, warning her to stop. But Gale hadn’t stopped. She had been so close.
Then Colossae. She had brought a girl back to life with her potions! And how did the city reward her? With fear, hatred, torches, violence. They kicked her and spat on her. All she could do was hiss and scurry away into the shadows, fleeing for her life.
Now she had reached the end of her strength. She’d had such plans. She
knew how talented she was. She could be a goddess, invent an immortality potion—something even better than Dionysus’s gift of wine. Why not?
Why should she not be rewarded by the gods?
Gale stopped at the top of a cliff, where the trail split to the left and right.
Standing at that miserable deserted crossroads was a tall woman in dark flowing robes, her head crowned in a fiery wreath of silver.
“I warned you,” said Hecate, her tone surprisingly gentle. “They will never accept a woman of your power.”
Gale’s gut pain made her double over. She whimpered, hating herself for looking so weak.
“This is the final crossroads,” Hecate said. “You could give up your magical arts and live.”
“Never,” Gale insisted. “You are my goddess! Why do you not protect me?”
Hecate looked pained. “I cannot protect you from the way they see you. I cannot protect you from your own talent. They fear you. They will never allow you to rise.”
“The gods or men?” Gale snarled.
Hecate didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. Gale knew the answer was both. “You could die,” Hecate said. “And the pain would stop.”
“No!” Gale snapped. “I won’t give them that satisfaction.”
Hecate nodded. “The only other choice is the hardest. To live—in eternal suffering. You would have your immortality, but not as a human or a god.
That they would never allow. Your existence must be a curse, not a blessing. It is the only way a witch of your talent could survive.”
“Then do it!” Gale snarled.
She began to change—shrinking, growing fur, cursing, and shrieking in pain
—until a polecat lay prone at the goddess’s feet. Hecate knelt, gently picked up the little animal, and cradled it in her arms.
“So be it,” Hecate said.
I lifted my tentacle from Gale’s back. My gut hurt. My eyes burned.
I’d been wrong about Hecate. She hadn’t turned Gale into a polecat out of jealousy. The reason was worse. She’d empathized. She’d lacked faith that Gale could survive on her magical talents alone. Hecate of all people knew how the world saw witches. She’d pitied Gale, admired her, and yes, maybe even feared her a little, but she could not imagine a mere human succeeding when she, a goddess, had failed. So Gale had to cease being human.
The laboratory was still shaking apart. Gale waited for me to cut her chain. She gave no sign that she was aware of what I’d sensed.
I steadied the tentacle holding Riptide and brought the sword down on the golden restraint, severing it neatly a few inches from Gale’s collar.
The polecat stared at me with surprise. You didn’t kill me. Also, why are you crying?
“You can flee if you want.” My voice was hoarse. “Maybe your next
adventure will end up better than this …. Or we can help each other. Either way, for what it’s worth, I believe in you.”
Gale’s whiskers quivered. She might’ve been sniffing the air, estimating how much time we had left based on the smell of the goo-pocalypse. Or maybe
she was just thinking You are one strange kid. At last, she raced over to another table and put her paws on the rim of a mixing bowl.
I hobbled over on my twisted ankle and looked inside. “It’s empty.”
Her expression said, No kidding, Einstein. We’re going to mix the potion in here.
“Got it,” I said. “Show me what we need.”
Honestly, Gale was a pretty good teacher. She’d run to a vial or pot and tap it to indicate we should add its contents to our concoction. I couldn’t wear gloves, for obvious reasons, but after a few tries, I got the hang of picking up vials without breaking them, then tipping them just enough to pour the liquid into the bowl. I even learned how to hold a spoon with my tentacles to scoop and mix. My mom would have been so proud. If I could learn to tie my shoes, she’d probably never let me change back to having human hands.
Whenever it was time to stop pouring, Gale barked. She scratched her paws on the table in a digging gesture to indicate when I should stir.
Meanwhile, the room disintegrated around us. The biggest fissure on the floor was now a foot-wide chasm that glowed orange and went down as far as I could see. I didn’t want to find out if it led to the Underworld. And no way did I want to be around when orange goo started dripping through Hades’s palace ceiling. I’d met his plumbers. They tended to solve all his
problems with fiery whips.
Slowly, our ingredients dissolved into a thick gray paste. I worried about the measurements, because every once in a while I’d spill too much powder or smoking liquid, and Gale would chirp at me in irritation. But she didn’t
make me start over. That was good, because chunks of ceiling plaster kept raining down around us until I could see the support beams right over our heads.
I was not having fun. I did not discover a natural talent for cooking. But if anyone ever wants to do a reality show mashup of The Great British Bake Off and Ninja Warrior, hit me up. I have ideas.
At last, I poured in something that looked like iron filings.
“SCREEK!” Gale commanded, digging her claws into the table. STIR, OCTOPUS BOY! STIR FOR YOUR LIFE!
I stirred. The paste changed color—first black, then turquoise. It smelled like cinnamon rolls, which was weird, since I hadn’t added any cinnamon.
Or rolls.
A new fissure opened in the floor behind me. To my left, the wall collapsed in a tidal wave of bricks.
“BARK!” Gale shrieked. Good enough!
She jumped onto my shoulder, I wrapped my tentacles around the bowl, and we fled the workshop as fast as my ankle would allow. We ran through
Scents Forever and joined Annabeth, Grover, and our two hog-tied naiads on the sidewalk.
“GO, GO, GO!” I yelled.
Grover and Annabeth ran, dragging the nymphs behind them. We made it
across the street as Scents Forever imploded, slipping into a glowing orange chasm that wasn’t going to do much for the neighborhood’s property values.
Phaedra wailed. “All our work! Our lives’ work!”
Her comment hit like a knife in my stomach. It reminded me too much of my vision of Gale.
“HOOT!” Annabeth said. My translation: Don’t complain. We’re letting you live.
“I will have vengeance!” Phaedra promised. “My sisters and I—”
A police car turned down Lafayette, sirens blaring as it came to check out why random buildings were imploding. I figured more emergency vehicles would be here soon.
“Good luck to you,” I told the nymph, and I meant it. “Come on, guys!”
While Phaedra screamed, we ran away like the heroic half-mutated demigods we were.
