The Tyrant’s Tomb by Rick Riordan

I sing of dead plants

And heroic shrubberies

Inspiring stuff

SNEAKING OUT OF ARoman military camp should not have been so easy.

Once we were safely through a hole in the fence, down a trench, through a tunnel, past the pickets, and out of sight of the camp’s sentry towers, Don was happy to explain how he’d arranged it all. “Dude, the place is designed to keep out armies. It’s not meant to keep in individual legionnaires, or keep out, you know, the occasional well-meaning faun who’s just looking for a hot meal. If you know the patrol schedule and are willing to keep changing up your entry points, it’s easy.”

“That seems remarkably industrious for a faun,” I noted.

Don grinned. “Hey, man. Slacking is hard work.”

“We’ve got a long walk,” Lavinia said. “Best keep moving.”

I tried not to groan. Another nighttime hike with Lavinia had not been on my evening’s agenda. But I had to admit I was curious. What had she and Don been arguing about before? Why had she wanted to talk to me earlier? And where were we going? With her stormy eyes and the black cap over her hair, Lavinia looked troubled and determined, less like a gawky giraffe, more like a tense gazelle. I’d seen her father, Sergei Asimov, perform once with the Moscow Ballet. He’d had that exact expression on his face before launching into a grand jeté.

I wanted to ask Lavinia what was going on, but her posture made it clear she was not in the mood for conversation. Not yet, anyway. We hiked in silence out of the valley and down into the streets of Berkeley.

It must have been about midnight by the time we got to People’s Park.

I had not been there since 1969, when I’d stopped by to experience some groovy hippie music and flower power and instead found myself in the middle of a riot. The police officers’ tear gas, shotguns, and batons had definitely not been groovy. It had taken all my godly restraint not to reveal my divine form and blast everyone within a six-mile radius to cinders.

Now, decades later, the scruffy park looked like it was still suffering from the aftermath. The worn brown lawn was strewn with piles of discarded clothing and cardboard signs bearing hand-painted slogans like GREEN SPACE NOT DORM SPACE and SAVE OUR PARK. Several tree stumps held potted plants and beaded necklaces, like shrines to the fallen. Trash cans overflowed. Homeless people slept on benches or fussed over shopping carts full of their worldly belongings.

At the far end of the square, occupying a raised plywood stage, was the largest sit-in of dryads and fauns I’d ever seen. It made total sense to me that fauns would inhabit People’s Park. They could laze around, panhandle, eat leftover food out of the garbage bins, and no one would bat an eye. The dryads were more of a surprise. At least two dozen of them were present. Some, I guessed, were the spirits of local eucalyptus and redwood trees, but most, given their sickly appearances, must have been dryads of the park’s long-suffering shrubs, grasses, and weeds. (Not that I am judging weed dryads. I’ve known some very fine crabgrasses.)

The fauns and dryads sat in a wide circle as if preparing for a sing-along around an invisible campfire. I got the feeling they were waiting for us—for me—to start the music.

I was already nervous enough. Then I spotted a familiar face and nearly jumped out of my zombie-infected skin. “Peaches?”

Meg’s demon-baby karpos bared his fangs and responded, “Peaches!”

His tree-branch wings had lost a few leaves. His curly green hair was dead brown at the tips, and his lamplike eyes didn’t shine as brightly as I remembered. He must’ve undergone quite an ordeal tracking us to Northern California, but his growl was still intimidating enough to make me fear for my bladder control.

“Where have you been?” I demanded.

“Peaches!”

I felt foolish for asking. Of course he had been peaches, probably because peaches, peaches, and peaches. “Does Meg know you’re here? How did you—?”

Lavinia gripped my shoulder. “Hey, Apollo. Time is short. Peaches filled us in on what he saw in Southern California, but he arrived there too late to help. He busted his wings to get up here as fast as he could. He wants you to tell the group firsthand what happened in SoCal.”

I scanned the faces in the crowd. The nature spirits looked scared, apprehensive, and angry—but mostly tired of being angry. I’d seen that look a lot among dryads in these latter days of human civilization. There was only so much pollution your average plant can breathe, drink, and get tangled in her branches before starting to lose all hope.

Now Lavinia wanted me to break their spirits completely by relating what had happened to their brethren in Los Angeles, and what fiery destruction was coming their way tomorrow. In other words, she wanted to get me killed by a mob of angry shrubs.

I gulped. “Um…”

“Here. This might help.” Lavinia slung her backpack off her shoulder. I hadn’t paid much attention to how bulky it looked, since she was always tromping around with lots of gear. When she opened it, the last thing I expected her to pull out was my ukulele—newly polished and restrung.

“How…?” I asked, as she placed it in my hands.

“I stole it from your room,” she said, as if this was obviously what friends did for each other. “You were asleep forever. I took it to a buddy of mine who repairs instruments—Marilyn, daughter of Euterpe. You know, the Muse of Music.”

“I—I know Euterpe. Of course. Her specialty is flutes, not ukuleles. But the action on this fret board is perfect now. Marilyn must be…I’m so…” I realized I was rambling. “Thank you.”

Lavinia fixed me with her stare, silently commanding me to make her effort worthwhile. She stepped back and joined the circle of nature spirits.

I strummed. Lavinia was right. The instrument helped. Not to hide behind—as I’d discovered, one cannot hide behind a ukulele. But it lent confidence to my voice. After a few mournful minor chords, I began to sing “The Fall of Jason Grace,” as I had when we first arrived at Camp Jupiter. The song quickly morphed, however. Like all good performers, I adapted the material to my audience.

I sang of the wildfires and droughts that had scorched Southern California. I sang of the brave cacti and satyrs from the Cistern in Palm Springs, who had struggled valiantly to find the source of the destruction. I sang of the dryads Agave and Money Maker, both gravely injured in the Burning Maze, and how Money Maker had died in the arms of Aloe Vera. I added some hopeful stanzas about Meg and the rebirth of the warrior dryad Meliai—how we’d destroyed the Burning Maze and given SoCal’s environment at least a fighting chance to heal. But I couldn’t hide the dangers that faced us. I described what I had seen in my dreams: the yachts approaching with their fiery mortars, the hellish devastation they would rain upon the entire Bay Area.

After strumming my final chord, I looked up. Green tears glistened in the dryads’ eyes. Fauns wept openly.

Peaches turned to the crowd and growled, “Peaches!”

This time, I was fairly sure I understood his meaning: See? I told you so!

Don sniffled, wiping his eyes with what looked like a used burrito wrapper. “It’s true, then. It’s happening. Faunus protect us…”

Lavinia dabbed away her own tears. “Thanks, Apollo.”

As if I’d done her a favor. Why, then, did I feel like I’d just kicked each and every one of these nature spirits right in the taproots? I’d spent a lot of time worrying about the fate of New Rome and Camp Jupiter, the Oracles, my friends, and myself. But these hackberries and crabgrasses deserved to live just as much. They, too, were facing death. They were terrified. If the emperors launched their weapons, they stood no chance. The homeless mortals with their shopping carts in People’s Park would also burn, right along with the legionnaires. Their lives were worth no less.

The mortals might not understand the disaster. They’d attribute it to runaway wildfires or whatever other causes their brains could comprehend. But I would know the truth. If this vast, weird, beautiful expanse of the California coast burned, it would be because I had failed to stop my enemies.

“Okay, guys,” Lavinia continued, after taking a moment to compose herself. “You heard him. The emperors will be here by tomorrow evening.”

“But that gives us no time,” said a redwood dryad. “If they do to the Bay Area what they did to LA…”

I could feel the fear ripple through the crowd like a cold wind.

“The legion will fight them, though, right?” a faun asked nervously. “I mean, they might win.”

“C’mon, Reginald,” a dryad chided. “You want to depend on mortals to protect us? When has that ever worked out?”

The others muttered assent.

“To be fair,” Lavinia cut in, “Frank and Reyna are trying. They’re sending a small team of commandos out to intercept the ships. Michael Kahale, and few other hand-picked demigods. But I’m not optimistic.”

“I hadn’t heard anything about that,” I said. “How did you find out?”

She raised her pink eyebrows like, Please. “And of course Lester here will try to summon godly help with some supersecret ritual, but…”

She didn’t need to say the rest. She wasn’t optimistic about that, either.

“So what will you do?” I asked. “What can you do?”

I didn’t mean to sound critical. I just couldn’t imagine any options.

The fauns’ panicky expressions seemed to hint at their game plan: get bus tickets to Portland, Oregon, immediately. But that wouldn’t help the dryads. They were literally rooted to their native soil. Perhaps they could go into deep hibernation, the way the dryads in the south had. But would that be enough to enable them to weather a firestorm? I’d heard stories about certain species of plants that germinated and thrived after devastating fires swept across the landscape, but I doubted most had that ability.

Honestly, I didn’t know much about dryad life cycles, or how they protected themselves from climate disasters. Perhaps if I’d spent more time over the centuries talking to them and less time chasing them…

Wow. I really didn’t even know myself anymore.

“We have a lot to discuss,” said one of the dryads.

“Peaches,” agreed Peaches. He looked at me with a clear message: Go away now.

I had so many questions for him: Why had he been absent so long? Why was he here and not with Meg?

I suspected I wouldn’t get any answers tonight. At least nothing beyond snarls, bites, and the word peaches. I thought about what the dryad had said about not trusting mortals to solve nature-spirit problems. Apparently, that included me. I had delivered my message. Now I was dismissed.

My heart was already heavy, and Meg’s state of mind was so fragile…. I didn’t know how I could break the news to her that her diapered little peach demon had become a rogue fruit.

“Let’s get you back to camp,” Lavinia said to me. “You’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

We left Don behind with the other nature spirits, all deep in crisis-mode conversation, and retraced our steps down Telegraph Avenue.

After a few blocks, I got up the courage to ask, “What will they do?”

Lavinia stirred as if she’d forgotten I was there. “You mean what will we do. ’Cause I’m with them.”

A lump formed in my throat. “Lavinia, you’re scaring me. What are you planning?”

“I tried to leave it alone,” she muttered. In the glow of the streetlamps, the wisps of pink hair that had escaped her cap seemed to float around her head like cotton candy. “After what we saw in the tomb—Bobby and the others, after you described what we’re facing tomorrow—”

“Lavinia, please—”

“I can’t fall into line like a good soldier. Me locking shields and marching off to die with everybody else? That’s not going to help anybody.”

“But—”

“It’s best you don’t ask.” Her growl was almost as intimidating as Peaches’s. “And it’s definitely best that you not say anything to anybody about tonight. Now, c’mon.”

The rest of the way back, she ignored my questions. She seemed to have a dark bubble-gum-scented cloud hanging over her head. She got me safely past the sentries, under the wall, and back to the coffee shop before she slipped away into the dark without even a good-bye.

Perhaps I should have stopped her. Raised the alarm. Gotten her arrested. But what good would that have done? It seemed to me Lavinia had never been comfortable in the legion. After all, she spent much of her time looking for secret exits and hidden trails out of the valley. Now she’d finally snapped.

I had a sinking feeling that I would never see her again. She’d be on the next bus to Portland with a few dozen fauns, and as much as I wanted to be angry about that, I could only feel sad. In her place, would I have done any differently?

When I got back to our guest room, Meg was passed out, snoring, her glasses dangling from her fingers, bedsheets wadded around her feet. I tucked her in as best I could. If she was having any bad dreams about her peach spirit friend plotting with the local dryads only a few miles away, I couldn’t tell. Tomorrow I’d have to decide what to say to her. Tonight, I’d let her sleep.

I crawled into my own cot, sure that I’d be tossing and turning until morning.

Instead, I passed out immediately.

When I woke, the early morning sunlight was in my face. Meg’s cot was empty. I realized I’d slept like the dead—no dreams, no visions. That did not comfort me. When the nightmares go silent, that usually means something else is coming—something even worse.

I dressed and gathered my supplies, trying not to think about how tired I was, or how much my gut hurt. Then I grabbed a muffin and a coffee from Bombilo and went out to find my friends. Today, one way or another, the fate of New Rome would be decided.