The Son of Neptune

anxious but not surprised when he told them about the giant’s army closing in on camp.

Frank choked when he heard about Tyson. ‘You have a half-brother who’s a Cyclops?’

‘Sure,’ Percy said. ‘Which makes him your great-great-great -’

‘Please.’ Frank covered his ears. ‘Enough.’

‘As long as he can get Ella to camp,’ Hazel said. ‘I’m worried about her.’

Percy nodded. He was still thinking about the lines of prophecy the harpy had recited – about the son of Neptune drowning, and the mark of Athena burning through Rome. He wasn’t sure what the first part meant, but he was starting to have an idea about the second. He tried to set the question aside. He had to survive this quest first.

The taxi turned on Highway One, which looked more like a small street to Percy, and took them north towards downtown. It was late afternoon, but the sun was still high in the sky.

‘I can’t believe how much this place has grown,’ Hazel muttered.

The taxi driver grinned in the rearview mirror. ‘Been a long time since you visited, miss?’

‘About seventy years,’ Hazel said.

The driver slid the glass partition closed and drove on in silence.

According to Hazel, almost none of the buildings were the same, but she pointed out features of the landscape: the vast forests ringing the city, the cold, grey waters of Cook Inlet tracing the north edge of town, and the Chugach Mountains rising greyish-blue in the distance, capped with snow even in June.

Percy had never smelled air this clean before. The town itself had a weather-beaten look to it, with closed stores, rusted-out cars and worn apartment complexes lining the road, but it was still beautiful. Lakes and huge stretches of woods cut through the middle. The Arctic sky was an amazing combination of turquoise and gold.

Then there were the giants. Dozens of bright-blue men, each thirty feet tall with grey frosty hair, were wading through the forests, fishing in the bay and striding across the mountains. The mortals didn’t seem to notice them. The taxi passed within a few yards of one who was sitting at the edge of a lake washing his feet, but the driver didn’t panic.

‘Um …’ Frank pointed at the blue guy.

‘Hyperboreans,’ Percy said. He was amazed he remembered that name. ‘Northern giants. I fought some when Kronos invaded Manhattan.’

‘Wait,’ Frank said. ‘When who did what?’

‘Long story. But these guys look … I don’t know, peaceful.’

‘They usually are,’ Hazel agreed. ‘I remember them. They’re everywhere in Alaska, like bears.’

‘Bears?’ Frank said nervously.

‘The giants are invisible to mortals,’ Hazel said. ‘They never bothered me, though one almost stepped on me by accident once.’

That sounded fairly bothersome to Percy, but the taxi kept driving. None of the giants paid them any attention. One stood right at the intersection of Northern Lights Road, straddling the highway, and they drove between his legs. The Hyperborean was cradling a Native American totem pole wrapped in furs, humming to it like a baby. If the guy hadn’t been the size of a building, he would’ve been almost cute.

The taxi drove through downtown, past a bunch of tourists’ shops advertising furs, Native American art and gold. Percy hoped Hazel wouldn’t get agitated and make the jewellery shops explode.

As the driver turned and headed towards the seashore, Hazel knocked on the glass partition. ‘Here is good. Can you let us out?’

They paid the driver and stepped onto Fourth Street. Compared to Vancouver, downtown Anchorage was tiny – more like a college campus than a city, but Hazel looked amazed.

‘It’s huge,’ she said. ‘That – that’s where the Gitchell Hotel used to be. My mom and I stayed there our first week in Alaska. And they’ve moved City Hall. It used to be there.’

She led them in a daze for a few blocks. They didn’t really have a plan beyond finding the fastest way to the Hubbard Glacier, but Percy smelled something cooking nearby – sausage, maybe? He realized he hadn’t eaten since that morning at Grandma Zhang’s.

‘Food,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

They found a cafe right by the beach. It was bustling with people, but they scored a table at the window and perused the menus.

Frank whooped with delight. ‘Twenty-four-hour breakfast!’

‘It’s, like, dinnertime,’ Percy said, though he couldn’t tell from looking outside. The sun was so high it could’ve been noon.

‘I love breakfast,’ Frank said. ‘I’d eat breakfast, breakfast and breakfast if I could. Though, um, I’m sure the food here isn’t as good as Hazel’s.’

Hazel elbowed him, but her smile was playful.

Seeing them like that made Percy happy. Those two definitely needed to get together. But it also made him sad. He thought about Annabeth, and wondered if he’d live long enough to see her again.

Think positive, he told himself.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘breakfast sounds great.’

They all ordered massive plates of eggs, pancakes and reindeer sausage, though Frank looked a little worried about the reindeer. ‘You think it’s okay that we’re eating Rudolph?’

‘Dude,’ Percy said, ‘I could eat Prancer and Blitzen, too. I’m hungry.’

The food was excellent. Percy had never seen anyone eat as fast as Frank. The red-nosed reindeer did not stand a chance.

Between bites of blueberry pancake, Hazel drew a squiggly curve and an X on her napkin. ‘So this is what I’m thinking. We’re here.’ She tapped X. ‘Anchorage.’

‘It looks like a seagull’s face,’ Percy said. ‘And we’re the eye.’

Hazel glared at him. ‘It’s a map, Percy. Anchorage is at the top of this sliver of ocean, Cook Inlet. There’s a big peninsula of land below us, and my old home town, Seward, is at the bottom of the peninsula, here.’ She drew another X at the base of the seagull’s throat. ‘That’s the closest town to the Hubbard Glacier. We could go around by sea, I guess, but it would take forever. We don’t have that kind of time.’

Frank polished off the last of his Rudolph. ‘But land is dangerous,’ he said. ‘Land means Gaia.’

Hazel nodded. ‘I don’t see that we’ve got much choice, though. We could have asked our pilot to fly us down, but I don’t know … his plane might be too big for the little Seward airport. And if we chartered another plane -’

‘No more planes,’ Percy said. ‘Please.’

Hazel held up her hand in a placating gesture. ‘It’s okay. There’s a train that goes from here to Seward. We might be able to catch one tonight. It only takes a couple of hours.’

She drew a dotted line between the two Xs.

‘You just cut off the seagull’s head,’ Percy noted.

Hazel sighed. ‘It’s the train line. Look, from Seward, the Hubbard Glacier is down here somewhere.’ She tapped the lower right corner of her napkin. ‘That’s where Alcyoneus is.’

‘But you’re not sure how far?’ Frank asked.

Hazel frowned and shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s only accessible by boat or plane.’

‘Boat,’ Percy said immediately.

‘Fine,’ Hazel said. ‘It shouldn’t be too far from Seward. If we can get to Seward safely.’

Percy gazed out of the window. So much to do, and only twenty-four hours left. This time tomorrow, the Feast of fortuna would be starting. Unless they unleashed Death and made it back to camp, the giant’s army would flood into the valley. The Romans would be the main course at a monster dinner.

Across the street, a frosty black sand beach led down to the sea, which was as smooth as steel. The ocean here felt different – still powerful, but freezing, slow and primal. No gods controlled that water, at least no gods Percy knew. Neptune wouldn’t be able to protect him. Percy wondered if he could even manipulate water here, or breathe underwater.

A Hyperborean giant lumbered across the street. Nobody in the cafe noticed. The giant stepped into the bay,