Resurrected

That night was one of the best I’ve ever spent with Silena, and, with my old memories back, it was by far the best I’ve had in my second life…so far.

Silena and I went down to the edge of Long Island Sound and laid on the sand for a couple hours, just talking and talking, getting to know one other once again. With the war with Gaea over, and with Kronos expelled from her soul, she looked more beautiful than ever with an orange Camp Half-Blood shirt and cut-off jeans shorts on. She was pretty without trying, effortlessly beautiful. Her brown hair and blue eyes were vibrant, even at night, picking up all of the little accents that the full moon’s light.

We had talked until the moon had past over the halfway point of its cycle, slowly returning to our cabins just after midnight. The next morning, I felt, for the first time in a long time, that I was well-rested, and ready for the day. There was an awkward moment when both Leo and I tried to sit down at the head of the table, but Leo laughed it off, mumbling something to himself like,

“Wow, never thought I would be in that situation.”

Nevertheless, as the Head Counselor, I let him take the head of the table, and I sat next to Jake. So many new faces, almost none of the old. It filled me with a mixture of sadness and hope, but mostly sadness, because I had personally witnessed campers younger than the ones sitting next to me get murdered in horrific ways by monsters. I would have to be thoroughly convinced before I started hoping for these campers again. The sight of the new faces also made me think of the things in my life that had lasted, like my relaionship with Silena. I thought about showing her the thing I had been working on, but it felt too soon, too rushed. That would need to wait until after we all redeemed our souls, if we did at all.

As I took in the crisp morning air and finished my oatmeal and pancakes, I thought about how Kronos had tried to control Silena again, and how she had stopped him. I felt proud of my girlfriend for beating him out of her soul, but I also felt a bit angry. I still thought of Kronos as Luke, all golden-eyed and weird. I hated the fact that Luke could still be causing me pain in life, even after I had come back from the dead.

Without meaning to, I started to hear Luke’s voice in my head, saying, in an annoying tone,

“You know, Charlie, Silena always had a crush on me. She liked me way before she liked you. She was my spy, my ears into this camp. You think, just because she has power over a little charmspeak, that she has power over me? Oh no, I’ll show you real power.”

A small fire of anger started to burn in my chest, growing larger by the second. I was fed up with Luke controlling our lives, both in the Underworld and in the real world. I must have been scowling harder than I had wanted to, because Leo asked,

“Beckendorf, are you okay?” He had taken to calling me Beckendorf, which felt more matural than ‘Charlie’ because it was everyone called me before I…well, died the first time. I had thought that the small fire of anger had subsided a little, but it must not have, because with a weird rasp to my voice, I snapped,

“Why do you care? All you want is me to be gone; gone from Cabin 9, gone from this Camp and gone from…”

I realized my mistake too late. I hate put my curse into my words, and Leo’s eyes were already clouding up, turning milky white and blind. My face went slack, and I felt light-headed from fear.

“No…no! Leo!” I shouted, as the entire Pavilion fell silent, “Leo! Come back to us, Leo!”

But he was already gone, all color disappearing from his eyes. Then, he reached one hand out, as if he were searching for something, and called, softly,

“Calypso? Calypso, I’m coming, I swore I would. I’m coming back for you, Calypso.”

“Leo?” I asked, “Leo, can you hear me?”

He turned his head, as if searching for the speaker, and I asked again,

“Leo?” My voice was getting desperate from fear now, “Leo, can you hear my voice?”

“Yeah,” He replied softly, “Where…where are you?”

Chiron had trotted over now, and most of the campers were still watching our table with concern. But I didn’t pay them any attention, because every fiber of my being was focused on Leo.

“I’m right here, buddy,” I replied, trying to keep my voice calm, “I’m right next to you.”

“Where’s Calypso?” He asked, his voice small and worried. Annabeth and Percy had come over to check out the situation, and Percy had a painful sympathy on his face.

“I don’t know, buddy,” I replied. I realized that, like Percy, he must have landed on Calypso’s island while I was dead. Silena had told me about Percy’s situation one night a long time ago, and I had thought at first that the information was useless, but now it all made sense. Leo had promised, probably on his life, or worse, on the Styx, to come back to Calypso, and unlike Percy, hadn’t accepted the fact that no man ever finds Ogygia twice. And, unlike Tommy, Leo didn’t have the one person he needed to snap him out of his blindness, like Tommy had Clarisse. That meant that Leo wouldn’t be able to regain his vision until he could get back to Calypso, which, to my knowledge, was impossible. And I had made him blind. Great.

“Crystal…use the crystal…guide the ship…find Ogygia,” mumbled Leo to himself.

Suddenly, my brain stopped moping and came back to the present, buzzing with an electric tingle.

“What? Leo, can you find Ogygia?”

“Crystal…need to install the crystal,” He murmured sleepily.

“What crystal?” I screamed, my voice cracking with desperation.

“Locker 14 in the basement,” He said, as if remembering an old recipe, “I put the crystal there when I came back…it could, it could guide us.”

“Could it get us to Olympus?” I asked.

“Yeah,” He said, as if warming up to the idea, simultaneously becoming less trance-like and more like a conscious Leo, albeit blind.

“Can you show me what it needs to be installed in?” I asked, now absolutely sure the plan we had in mind was crazy beyond belief.

“Yes, I can!” Leo shouted in joy, now fully awake after being blinded by my stupid curse/superpower, “Charlie, you’re a genius! Well, not really, because you kind of blinded me, but despite that, you’re a genius!”

And with that, I helped Leo out of his seat at the Hephaestus dining table and guided him to the basement of Cabin 9, quickly finding Locker 14.

“What’s the combination, Leo?” I asked with a nervous excitement.

“Odysseus,” he said. I punched in the combination, and the locker popped open with a mechanical hiss, revealing two objects. The object in front was an old bronze navigation device, like an astrolabe from a ship. It looked important, but it also looked unfinished, like it was missing some pieces. Behind it was a four-inch long triangular piece of glass…no, crystal, shaped like a piece of pie. It was mostly clear, with a little light-green tinge, and was as beautiful as any jewel I’d ever seen.

“Woah,” I breathed in awe, “Leo, where’d you get these?”

“Awesome, aren’t they? I got the astrolabe from the Kerkopes in Venice, little klepto-dwarves that were a royal pain in the podex.”

I laughed, more in relief than in joy, that the old Leo was back.

“And the crystal,” He continued, “I got from Calypso herself, when I landed there the first time. All I have to do, I think, is connect the two, and hopefully the crystal will guide the astrolabe to return to its point of origin.”

“Sounds simple enough,” I remarked, “but that’s how they all start, isn’t it?”

He snorted in agreement, and then we closed Locker 14, headed out of the Cabin and headed to the Forges, beginning to piece together the intricate instrument.

After about three hours of working, and blowing straight through lunch, Chiron, Percy, Annabeth and Hazel walked through the doors to the forges. They all had worried looks on their faces, and all of those looks softened a bit when they saw us, not dead and looking perfectly normal, except for Leo’s blindness. I have to say, for a kid who couldn’t see where his hands where or where on a certain part he was working, he was amazing. It was if his mind could see through the milky white of his eyes, letting him work as if he didn’t have any impairment whatsoever. By the time that we had told them our plan, the worried looks had returned.

“So you’re telling me,” Percy summarized, “that this thing,” he gestured to the astrolabe, which the crystal was now almost fully attached to, “can guide you to Ogygia, and you so sure that it’ll work, that you want to take the Argo II on a quest?”

“Pretty much,” Leo remarked from the worktable as he put down his welding gun, “It’s a crazy plan, I know, but I would like to remind the audience of two things.”

He turned toward the back wall of the Forges like there was a live TV audience there, and lectured,

“One, our plans, as you lovely fans and audience members know, are always crazy. Two, I personally would like my sight back as soon as possible.”

He turned back towards us like he was done explaining, but secretly, I wanted to add that a third reason he wanted to return to Ogygia was that he probably wanted to see Calypso again, which both filled me with a sense of happiness for Leo, and sadness because he could never stay there forever. But those were problems for another day.

Leo beckoned me over to help him finish the astrolabe, and I used a screwdriver to finish setting the crystal in place. It dropped into the open slot in the instrument with a soft click and we both exhaled. Then, without any of us touching it, the crystal began to move, directing the astrolabe southeast, as we were facing north.

“Beautiful,” Chiron sighed.

“Stop complimenting it!” Leo complained, “cause I can’t see it yet!”

With a smile on his face, Chiron said nothing more, but Percy spoke up, asking,

“You’ll be taking the Argo II? Just you two?”

“That’s what I was going to get to,” I answered, “We’ll need a crew.”

“Then count me in,” Percy quipped, with a bit too much enthusiasm, both from excitement and anxiety.

“Perfect,” I replied, “Who else?”

“I would advise against that,” Chiron cautioned, “With Percy and you two, that will be three people, and you know how important that number is, especially on quests.”

“Woah, woah, woah,” Annabeth butted in, “You just going to go off like that? In the middle of the situation with Ethan?”

She didn’t even need an answer, because with the combined determination in all three of our faces, she got an answer. We were going to Ogygia, whether they liked it or not.

Notes

First of hopefully four chapters on this three-day weekend. ENJOY!