Sally laughed. “Well, we have that in common. Percy, you take Apollo. We’ll meet you back here in a while.”
In short order, I was showered, bandaged, and dressed in Jacksonesque hand-me-downs. Percy left me alone in the bathroom to take care of all this myself, for which I was grateful. He offered me some ambrosia and nectar—food and drink of the gods—to heal my wounds, but I was not sure it would be safe to consume in my mortal state. I didn’t want to self-combust, so I stuck with mortal first-aid supplies.
When I was done, I stared at my battered face in the bathroom mirror. Perhaps teenage angst had permeated the clothes, because I felt more like a sulky high schooler than ever. I thought how unfair it was that I was being punished, how lame my father was, how no one else in the history of time had ever experienced problems like mine.
Of course, all that was empirically true. No exaggeration was required.
At least my wounds seemed to be healing at a faster rate than a normal mortal’s. The swelling in my nose had subsided. My ribs still ached, but I no longer felt as if someone were knitting a sweater inside my chest with hot needles.
Accelerated healing was the least Zeus could do for me. I was a god of medicinal arts, after all. Zeus probably just wanted me to get well quickly so I could endure more pain, but I was grateful nonetheless.
I wondered if I should start a small fire in Percy Jackson’s sink, perhaps burn some bandages in thanks, but I decided that might strain the Jacksons’ hospitality.
I examined the black T-shirt Percy had given me. Emblazoned on the front was Led Zeppelin’s logo for their record label: winged Icarus falling from the sky. I had no problem with Led Zeppelin. I had inspired all their best songs. But I had a sneaking suspicion that Percy had given me this shirt as a joke—the fall from the sky. Yes, ha-ha. I didn’t need to be a god of poetry to spot the metaphor. I decided not to comment on it. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I took a deep breath. Then I did my usual motivational speech in the mirror: “You are gorgeous and people love you!”
I went out to face the world.
Percy was sitting on his bed, staring at the trail of blood droplets I had made across his carpet.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
Percy spread his hands. “Actually, I was thinking about the last time I had a nosebleed.”
“Oh…”
The memory came back to me, though hazy and incomplete. Athens. The Acropolis. We gods had battled side by side with Percy Jackson and his comrades. We defeated an army of giants, but a drop of Percy’s blood hit the earth and awakened the Earth Mother Gaea, who had not been in a good mood.
That’s when Zeus turned on me. He’d accused me of starting the whole thing, just because Gaea had duped one of my progeny, a boy named Octavian, into plunging the Roman and Greek demigod camps into a civil war that almost destroyed human civilization. I ask you: How was that my fault?
Regardless, Zeus had held me responsible for Octavian’s delusions of grandeur. Zeus seemed to consider egotism a trait the boy had inherited from me. Which is ridiculous. I am much too self-aware to be egotistical.
“What happened to you, man?” Percy’s voice stirred me from my reverie. “The war ended in August. It’s January.”
“It is?” I suppose the wintry weather should have been a clue, but I hadn’t given it much thought.
“Last I saw you,” Percy said, “Zeus was chewing you out at the Acropolis. Then bam—he vaporized you. Nobody’s seen or heard from you for six months.”
I tried to recall, but my memories of godhood were getting fuzzier rather than clearer. What had happened in the last six months? Had I been in some kind of stasis? Had Zeus taken that long to decide what to do with me? Perhaps there was a reason he’d waited until this moment to hurl me to earth.
Father’s voice still rang in my ears: Your fault. Your punishment. My shame felt fresh and raw, as if the conversation had just happened, but I could not be sure.
After being alive for so many millennia, I had trouble keeping track of time even in the best of circumstances. I would hear a song on Spotify and think, “Oh, that’s new!” Then I’d realize it was Mozart’s Piano Concerto no. 20 in D Minor from two hundred years ago. Or I’d wonder why Herodotus the historian wasn’t in my contacts list. Then I’d remember Herodotus didn’t have a smartphone, because he had been dead since the Iron Age.
It’s very irritating how quickly you mortals die.
“I—I don’t know where I’ve been,” I admitted. “I have some memory gaps.”
Percy winced. “I hate memory gaps. Last year I lost an entire semester thanks to Hera.”
“Ah, yes.” I couldn’t quite remember what Percy Jackson was talking about. During the war with Gaea, I had been focused mostly on my own fabulous exploits. But I suppose he and his friends had undergone a few minor hardships.