“Cut it out!” Piper yelled at the river.
Jason looked startled. “Cut what out?”
“Not you,” Piper said. “Him.”
She felt silly pointing at the water, but she was certain it was working some sort of magic, swaying their feelings.
Just when she thought she had lost it and Jason would tell her so, the river spoke:
A figure emerged from the swimming hole as if rising on an elevator.
Piper’s shoulders tensed. It was the creature she’d seen in her knife blade, the bull with the human face. His skin was as blue as the water. His hooves levitated on the river’s surface. At the top of his bovine neck was the head of a man with short curly black hair, a beard done in ringlets Ancient Greek style, deep, mournful eyes behind bifocal glasses, and a mouth that seemed set in a permanent pout. Sprouting from the left side of his head was a single bull’s horn—a curved black-and-white one like warriors might turn into drinking cups. The imbalance made his head tilt to the left, so that he looked like he was trying to get water out of his ear.
“Hello,” he said sadly. “Come to kill me, I suppose.”
Jason put his shoes back on and stood slowly. “Um, well—”
“No!” Piper intervened. “I’m sorry. This is embarrassing. We didn’t want to bother you, but Hercules sent us.”
“Hercules!” The bull-man sighed. His hooves pawed the water as if ready to charge. “To me, he’ll always be Heracles. That’s his Greek name, you know:
“Funny name,” Jason said. “Since he hates her.”
“Indeed,” the bull-man said. “Perhaps that’s why he didn’t protest when the Romans renamed him Hercules. Of course, that’s the name most people know him by…his
The bull-man spoke with bitterness but familiarity, as if Hercules was an old friend who had lost his way.
“You’re Achelous?” Piper asked.
The bull-man bent his front legs and lowered his head in a bow, which Piper found both sweet and a little sad. “At your service. River god extraordinaire. Once the spirit of the mightiest river in Greece. Now sentenced to dwell here, on the opposite side of the island from my old enemy. Oh, the gods are cruel! But whether they put us so close together to punish me or Hercules, I have never been sure.”
Piper wasn’t sure what he meant, but the background noise of the river was invading her mind again— reminding her how hot and thirsty she felt, how pleasant a nice swim would be. She tried to focus.
“I’m Piper,” she said. “This is Jason. We don’t want to fight. It’s just that Heracles—Hercules—whoever he is, got mad at us and sent us here.”
She explained about their quest to the ancient lands to stop the giants from waking Gaea. She described how their team of Greeks and Romans had come together, and how Hercules had thrown a temper tantrum when he found out Hera was behind it.
Achelous kept tipping his head to the left, so Piper wasn’t sure if he was dozing off or dealing with one-horn fatigue.
When she was done, Achelous regarded her as if she were developing a regrettable skin rash. “Ah, my dear… the legends are true, you know. The spirits, the water cannibals.”
Piper had to fight back a whimper. She hadn’t told Achelous
“River gods know many things,” he said. “Alas, you are focusing on the wrong story. If you had made it to Rome, the story of the flood would have served you better.”
“Piper?” Jason asked. “What’s he talking about?”
Her thoughts were suddenly as jumbled as kaleidoscope glass.
“I—I’m not sure,” she said, though the mention of a flood story rang a distant bell. “Achelous, I don’t understand—”
“No, you don’t,” the river god sympathized. “Poor thing. Another girl stuck with a son of Zeus.”
“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “It’s Jupiter, actually. And how does that make her a
Achelous ignored him. “My girl, do you know the cause of my fight with Hercules?”
“It was over a woman,” Piper recalled. “Deianira?”
“Yes.” Achelous heaved a sigh. “And do you know what happened to her?”
“Uh…” Piper glanced at Jason.
He took out his guidebook and began flipping through pages. “It doesn’t really—”
Achelous snorted indignantly. “What is
Jason blinked. “Just…
“That is
