Find someone who loves you the way my girlfriend pushes me off a cliff.
Without hesitation. With full confidence in your abilities, with the rock-
steady belief that your relationship can handle it, and with complete faith that when you come out of the water, assuming you survive, you will totally forgive them for the push. Almost certainly forgive them. Probably.
Bonus points if you find someone with enough chutzpah to say Bon voyage while they do it.
Somehow, I held on to Iris’s staff as I plunged into the pool. The water hit like an arctic blast, freezing the blood in my capillaries and curling my fingers and toes. I could breathe underwater, but the cold in my lungs felt like the worst case of heartburn ever. Is chest freeze a thing?
As the cloud of bubbles dispersed, I found myself floating in the clearest turquoise water I’d ever seen. Light filtered from the surface, casting shimmering blue fish-scale patterns across the walls of the ravine so they looked like they were clad in living chain mail.
I seemed to be alone. No horned serpents. No Furies lolling around in swimsuits. A cloud of grass, dirt, and sweat was starting to bloom around me, though. The staff appeared to be smoking, its centuries of grunge slowly loosening.
On one hand: hooray, it was getting clean! On the other hand, I felt terrible for polluting this pristine water.
Then a voice said, “Oh, Hades no.”
The guy floating in front of me was sapphire blue, which made him almost invisible in the water. I could barely lock my eyes on him even
though he was within spitting distance. (But I don’t spit underwater, because that’s just rude.)
He wore a tank top and loose pants and had the most magnificent man bun in the history of man buns. I could see how he might be a yoga instructor, except that he didn’t have that calm, meditative energy. With his scowling bearded mouth and his dark angry eyes, he looked ready to sun-salute me right across the face.
“Hi,” I said. “You must be the river god Elisson.”
“Actually, I’m your pool attendant. Would you like a towel or a beach umbrella?”
“Really?”
“No, you dolt! Of course I am Elisson, mighty potamus of this river!”
I had met enough river gods that I could usually stop myself from smirking when they used the term potamus, but it was still hard not to think of hippos.
“Sorry to barge into your waters,” I said. “I’m Percy Jackson. Son of Poseidon?”
I put the question mark at the end because sometimes my dad’s name will open doors—usually watery doors.
Elisson’s eyes widened. “Oh . . .” He crossed his muscular blue arms like a genie about to grant me a wish. “Well, in that case, it’s fine that you dropped into my pristine private grotto with that filthy staff and without even taking your shoes off.”
“Really?”
“No, you dolt!” He flicked two fingers in my direction. My shoes and socks were ripped off my feet and shot out of the water. The staff of Iris leaped from my hand and rocketed to the surface.
I was doing the ethical math here, trying to figure out if fighting a river god in his home river was a winnable situation, and if so, whether Iris would consider it “cruelty-free.” My guesses were no and no.
“Um . . . sorry about the shoes,” I said, as diplomatically as I could. “But I kind of need to clean that staff. Do you mind if I—?”
“Go after it?” Elisson asked. “Of course not.”
He flicked his fingers again, and this time I shot out of the water, slamming into the side of the cliff. I landed in a wet, groaning lump on a narrow ledge. Lying next to me, thankfully not broken, was Iris’s staff, still pretty grungy. My shoes were nowhere to be seen.
I sat up and rubbed my head. My fingers came back bloody. That probably wasn’t good.
Elisson erupted from the pool, the surface boiling around his waist. Orbiting his hair was a tiny galaxy of weightless water droplets centered on the black hole of his man bun.
“I ask for so little,” he said. “Use the sign-up sheet. Horned serpents are Tuesday-Thursday. Furies and other Underworld minions are Monday-Wednesday-Friday. Demigods are never. Take off your shoes before entering my waters. And above all, only use the LOWER POOLS. My headwaters are off-limits! You have managed to break all the rules.”
I started to say, “I didn’t know—”
Elisson pointed at a bronze plaque riveted to the cliff wall next to me.
POOL RULES.
I hate written instructions. Especially those posted where you can’t see them until you’ve already broken them.
“Okay,” I said. “But—”
“Let me guess.” Elisson’s water galaxy began to swirl more rapidly, his man bun bending time and space. “The rules don’t apply to you.”
“Well, I wouldn’t—”
“You’re an exception. Your need is important.” “I mean—”
“It’s bad enough I’m being daylighted,” Elisson grumbled. “My water quality has turned abysmal downstream. Now you want to pollute my last pristine pool because you need some stick cleaned?”
“It’s Iris’s staff, if that helps.” “Oh, in that case—”
“You’re going to shut me down with sarcasm again, aren’t you?”
“So you’re not a complete idiot!” Elisson smiled. “That was sarcasm, by the way.”
Just my luck. I’d brought sincerity to a sarcasm fight. I guess Iris and Hebe had dulled my natural defenses.
I glanced up at the ledge, where Annabeth was standing perfectly still, wisely not drawing attention to herself. She was giving me that look of alarm I knew well: Percy, don’t you die.
Elisson hadn’t seemed to have noticed her yet. I wanted to keep it that way. I also didn’t want to die, but at least if I got killed down here, Annabeth
would feel really bad about pushing me. Then I could tease her about it forever.
Except I’d be dead. Never mind.
In the distance, Grover’s pipes sounded frantic and weak. I wondered how many snakes were chasing him, and how long he could outrun them while playing a melody. As far as I knew, he had no experience with marching bands.
I raised my hands in surrender.
“I get it,” I told Elisson. “I met the Hudson and the East Rivers one time.
They hate getting polluted. And your waters are much, much cleaner.”
Elisson’s mouth twitched. I couldn’t tell if he was disgusted, or surprised, or pleased . . . but he hadn’t killed me yet, so I decided to keep talking. (This is a mistake I make a lot.)
“Rivers have a tough life,” I said. “I wouldn’t want people turning me into a drainage ditch, or dumping sewage in me, or building a dam generator on me, or a dam anything, really.” My hand crept over to the staff of Iris, all stealthy-like. I gripped the handle.
“I should have asked you for permission,” I continued. “Rookie mistake. But there has to be a way I can make it up to you and get this staff washed, because it’s really important to Iris. She was insistent that it had to be your waters, because . . .” I gulped. My head was throbbing, making it hard to think.
What would Annabeth do? I looked up and saw her tapping an imaginary watch on her wrist. Not helpful. Grover’s music was getting farther and farther away.
“Because Iris admires you,” I told the river god. “Oh, wow, the way she talks about you. And your yoga classes! I think she’s your number one fan.”
I looked for any sign that my words were having an impact. At that point, I would’ve taken almost any reaction except sarcasm. Who knew a neat-freak yoga instructor could be so bitter?
“You want to make it up to me,” Elisson said. “Totally.”
“I suppose you can snap your fingers and undo all the damage to my river, leave it cleaner than you found it.”
“Um—”
“Which you would only do after you’ve gotten what you wanted,” he guessed, “and I’d have to take your word for it.”
“Well . . .” I gripped the staff tighter. This was not going the way I wanted. I wondered if I’d have better luck riding the rapids back to Yonkers. “I mean, I’m happy to try.”
“How did that work out with the Hudson and the East Rivers?” he asked, sweet as acid. “Are they all nice and clean now?”
“Oh. I mean . . . no, but they’re harder to clean. They’re a lot bigger than you.”
Wrong thing to say. Elisson’s eyes narrowed. “I see. You find me small. Inconsequential. Even though there’s a six-month waiting list to get into my vinyasa flow class.”
Up on the ledge, Annabeth was digging through her backpack, no doubt looking for something that might bail me out of the situation she’d been so confident I could handle. I imagined her drawing her knife and yelling Kowabunga! as she jumped onto Elisson’s back. As much as I would’ve enjoyed seeing that, I didn’t want to see the consequences when she faced the wrath of the sarcastic man-bun god.
I tried to think of another solution, which wasn’t easy with my pounding headache. In the future, I’d have to remember not to crack my skull until after I was done using the brain inside it.
“There has to be something,” I pleaded. “Maybe a visit to Poseidon’s palace? He’s constructing this amazing infinity pool. You could do your . . . flow-class thing overlooking the continental shelf. Like, with whales.”
This sounded like a sweet deal to me, because whales are cool. But apparently, whale yoga was not a fad Elisson was into.
“I’m afraid not.” His smile turned a few degrees colder than his water. “But I do have a way you can make it up to me.”
I nodded eagerly, which made my vision blur. “Anything, sure.” “Anything? Perfect. I’ve always wondered how long it would take a son
of Poseidon to drown. Let’s find out!”
The river surged over me like a wall of liquid bricks.
