Finally, we emerged from the grass near the base of the waterfall. We climbed a series of boulders until we stood on a slippery ledge overlooking a wide pool twenty feet below. The water was as clear as glass, free of snakes, and just begging to be cannonballed into. On the downside, it was ringed by sheer cliffs, with no obvious way to get out again unless I wanted to ride the rapids downriver through Serpent Splash Town.
“You could jump in with the staff,” Annabeth suggested.
“Sure,” I said. “The problem is climbing back up when I’m done.”
Annabeth pulled a rope from her backpack and smiled.
“You think of everything,” I said, trying to sound happy about it. That pool was looking a little too inviting . . . and I remembered Iris mentioning an angry river god, which seemed like the sort of detail that would bite me in the podex later. “Maybe we should plan this out a little bit first. That’s your thing right, planning?”
Then I heard the music—the unmistakable trill of panpipes in the distance. It was a song I recognized from my mom’s LP collection: Duran Duran’s “Union of the Snake.” The clock had started. Grover was in trouble.
“Time’s up,” Annabeth told me. “Bon voyage.”
And she pushed me over the side.
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—？”