He traipsed along next to Blanche, trying to engage her in conversation. Occasionally he’d throw himself into her line of vision, posing in different dramatic angles, draping himself across tables of vegetables like a lounge singer on a piano. She just ignored him, stopping every once in a while to photograph a dying dandelion or ragweed growing between the cracks in the pavement.
“Relax,” Annabeth told me. “You’re grinding your teeth.”
“Am not,” I said, though I totally was.
She took my hand. “Enjoy the day. Maybe later I’ll let you buy me lunch.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better,” I said, though it totally did.
As we got deeper into the market, the stalls started to offer stuff that didn’t have much to do with farms. A leatherworker was hawking hand-tooled pouches, wallets, and knife sheaths. （Is there a big market for knife sheaths uptown?） A soap maker offered cruelty-free soap, because nothing is worse than showering with cruel soap. An incense maker displayed a thousand different kinds of smelly stuff to burn.
I was starting to see why a goddess might want to hang out at a farmers’ market. Gods loved burnt offerings. They could live on fragrances the way I could live on my mom’s seven-layer dip. And this farmers’ market was a smorgasbord of smells.
Blanche stopped suddenly. “Okay, there’s my mom.” She pointed down the aisle, past a linen-towel salesman and a display of macramé plant hangers.
And there was Iris.
She looked nothing like I remembered. That didn’t surprise me. Gods can change their appearance the way mortals change clothes. Today, Iris was a plump, grandmotherly woman with long gray hair and a flowing purple-and-white muumuu decorated with . . . well, iris flowers.
Something about the goddess’s presence raised the hairs on my arms. My survival instincts were screaming, Run! She will offer you granola!
Her booth was decorated with thousands of crystals—some hanging from embroidered cords, some set in bronze holders, all flashing in the sunlight and sending a riot of rainbows across the market. I imagined all of them containing Iris-messages and getting jumbled together as the wrong quests were distributed to the wrong demigods . . . which actually would explain a lot. Maybe my entire career had been a series of Iris-message butt dials.
“Just relax,” Blanche told us. “Let me do the talking.”
“As long as I look all right,” Grover said, turning his face to the sun in his best impression of a dying wildflower.
Blanche paid him no mind. She marched up to the booth with us in her wake.
Iris’s eyes lit up as we got closer. “My dear, what a lovely surprise! And you brought . . . friends!”
She said the word friends as if it were completely illogical when paired with Blanche, like lobster sandals.
“They’re fellow campers,” Blanche said. “They wanted to meet you.”
Iris looked us over. Her eyes were multicolored, like oil on water. I smiled and tried to look friendly, but I couldn’t tell whether she recognized me.
“How wonderful,” Iris said noncommittally. Her mouth tugged down at the corners as she examined her daughter. “And I see you’re still wearing all black. Didn’t you like the scarf I sent you?”
“Yeah, it was great,” Blanche said. “The pink hummingbirds were totally my style.”
Iris winced. “And I don’t suppose . . .” She gestured at the camera. “I don’t suppose you have started using color film?”
“Black and white is better,” Blanche said.
Iris seemed to be trying to smile while a dagger was being twisted into her gut. “I see.”
I was beginning to doubt Annabeth’s plan. It seemed like we were about to get dragged into some mother-daughter drama that would not help our quest. I imagined getting cursed by Iris and leaving the market with my hair permanently blue and my skin decorated with pink hummingbirds.
“So, anyway,” Blanche continued, “you said you’d be happy to do me a favor?”
Iris’s eyes widened. “Yes, of course, my dear! A new dress? A better camera? A trip to see the northern lights?”
The goddess sounded weirdly desperate to please. It occurred to me that Blanche had found a novel strategy to get a godly parent’s attention: complete indifference. It pained Iris to see her child so obsessed with monochrome.
I wondered if that approach would work for me. If I moved to the Sahara Desert and feigned a hatred for water, would Poseidon start shipping me presents: fish tanks, swimming pools, brochures for ocean cruises . . . ?