No, Percy admitted. I’ve got a man satchel full of macrobiotic beef jerky, though.
The whale shuddered. Promise not to feed me this, and I will take you north.
Deal.
Soon Percy had made a makeshift rope harness and strapped it around the whale’s upper body. They sped north under whale-power, and at Hazel and Frank’s insistence, Percy settled in for a nap.
His dreams were as disjointed and scary as ever.
He imagined himself on Mount Tamalpais, north of San Francisco, fighting at the old Titan stronghold. That didn’t make sense. He hadn’t been with the Romans when they had attacked, but he saw it all clearly: a Titan in armor, Annabet hand two other girls fighting at Percy’s side. One of the girls died in the battle. Percy knelt over her, watching as she dissolved into stars.
Then he saw the giant warship in its dry dock. The bronze dragon figurehead glinted in the morning light. The riggings and armaments were complete, but something was wrong. A hatch in the deck was open, and smoke poured from some kind of engine. A boy with curly black hair was cursing as he pounded the engine with a wrench. Two other demigods squatted next to him, watching with concern. One was a teenage guy with short blond hair. The other was a girl with long dark hair.
“You realize it’s the solstice,” the girl said. “We’re supposed to leave today.”
“I know that!” The curly-haired mechanic whacked the engine a few more times. “Could be the fizzrockets. Could be the samophlange. Could be Gaea messing with us again. I’m not sure!”
“How long?” the blond guy asked.
“Two, three days?”
“They may not have that long,” the girl warned.
Something told Percy that she meant Camp Jupiter. Then the scene shifted again.
He saw a boy and his dog roaming over the yellow hills of California. But as the image became clearer, Percy realized it wasn’t a boy. It was a Cyclops in ragged jeans and a flannel shirt. The dog was a shambling mountain of black fur, easily as big as a rhino. The Cyclops carried a massive club over his shoulder, but Percy didn’t feel that he was an enemy. He kept yelling Percy’s name, calling him…brother?
“He smells farther away,” the Cyclops moaned to the dog. “Why does he smell farther?”
“ROOF!” the dog barked, and Percy’s dream changed again.
He saw a range of snowy mountains, so tall they broke the clouds. Gaea’s sleeping face appeared in the shadows of the rocks.
Such a valuable pawn, she said soothingly. Do not fear, Percy Jackson. Come north! Your friends will die, yes. But I will preserve you for now. I have great plans for you.
In a valley between the mountains lay a massive field of ice. The edge plunged into the sea, hundreds of feet below, with sheets of frost constantly crumbling into the water. On top of the ice field stood a legion camp—ramparts, moats, towers, barracks, just like Camp Jupiter except three times as large. At the crossroads outside the principia, a figure in dark robes stood shackled to the ice. Percy’s vision swept past him, into the headquarters. There, in the gloom, sat a giant even bigger than Polybotes. His skin glinted gold. Displayed behind him were the tattered, frozen banners of a Roman legion, including a large, golden eagle with its wings spread.
We await you, the giant’s voice boomed. While you fumble your way north, trying to find me, my armies will destroy your precious camps—first the Romans, then the others. You cannot win, little demigod.
Percy lurched awake in cold gray daylight, rain falling on his face.
“I thought I slept heavily,” Hazel said. “Welcome to Portland.”
Percy sat up and blinked. The scene around him was so different from his dream, he wasn’t sure which was real. The Pax floated on an iron-black river through the middle of a city. Heavy clouds hung low overhead. The cold rain was so light, it seemed suspended in the air. On Percy’s left were industrial warehouses and railroad tracks. To his right was a small downtown area—an almost cozy-looking cluster of towers between the banks of the river and a line of misty forested hills.
Percy rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “How did we get here?”
Frank gave him a look like, You won’t believe this. “The killer whale took us as far as the Columbia River. Then he passed the harness to a couple of twelve-foot sturgeons.”
Percy thought Frank had said surgeons. He had this weird image of giant doctors in scrubs and face masks, pulling their boat upstream. Then he realized Frank meant sturgeons, like the fish. He was glad he hadn’t said anything. Would have been embarrassing, his being son of the sea god and all.
“Anyway,” Frank continued, “the sturgeons pulled us for a long time. Hazel and I took turns sleeping. Then we hit this river—”
“The Willamette,” Hazel offered.