Chapter 5:I Play Pinochle With A Horse

Dear Journal,

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals, Most of them wanted to kill me, the rest wanted food. I knew that I woke up several times, but everything I heard or saw made no sense, so I passed out again. The only thing I remembered was that I was lying in a soft bed, being fed something that tasted like butter popcorn, but it was actually pudding. Then the girl with the curly blond hair hovered over me, and when she saw my eyes open, she asked, "What will happen at the summer solstice?" I managed to say, "What?" She looked around and said" What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!" "I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't....." Somebody knocked on the door, and the girl quickly filled my mouth with pudding. Then when I woke up again, the girl was gone. One thing I saw was A blond dude, like a surfer, and he was standing in the corner of the bedroom watching me. He had blue eyes, but he had a dozen of them, on his cheeks, his forehead, and the back of his hands.

When I finally gained my conscience, there was nothing weird about my surroundings, except they were nicer than I was used to. I was sitting in a chair on a huge porch and on the table beside me was a tall drink, it looked like iced apple juice. My hand was so weak I almost dropped the glass once I got my fingers around it. "Careful," a familiar voice said. I saw Grover was leaning against the porch railing, looking like he hadn't slept for a week. I also saw him wearing a T-shirt that said Camp Half Blood. He was the plain old Grover. Not the goat boy. So maybe I was having a nightmare. Maybe my mom was okay. We were still on vacation, and we'd stopped here at this big house for some reason. "You saved my life," Grover said. Then he gave me the shoebox and inside was the bull's horn, that I broke off from the minotaur. It wasn't a nightmare. It was real. I asked "Is my mom okay?" He looked down and said "I'm sorry, Percy, I am a failure. I am the worst satyr in the world."Then he helped me hold the glass and put the straw to my lips. I recoiled at the taste, because I was expecting an apple juice, it was actually chocolate-chip cookies. And it wasn't just any cookies, it was my mom's homemade blue chocolate-chip cookies, buttery and hot, with the chips still melting. Then after I drank, he asked if I was okay now. I said " Like I could throw Nancy Bobofit a hundred yards."Then he took my glass , and set it on the back table. He said "Come on, Chiron and Mr.D are waiting."

The porch wrapped all the way around the farmhouse. My legs felt wobbly, trying to walk that far. when we got to the end of the porch, two men sat across from each other at a card table. The blond haired girl who'd fed me the pudding was leaning on the porch next to them. Grover said "That's Mr. D. He is the camp director, and that is Chiron, I think you already know him. I actually did, it was Mr.Brunner, my Latin teacher. Grover said " And that is Annabeth Chase she has been here longer than anybody else." They all said hi to me and I said Hi back to them. I asked Mr.D what the D stands for and he told me that it was Dionysus, He was the God of Wine. I was amazed and I said "You are a God!" Then Chiron talked to me for a while, he told me why he was at Yancy and everything else. All of a sudden Chiron was changing, like changing to something else. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box he had was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. I stared at the horse who had just sprung from the wheelchair: a huge white stallionb. But where its neck should be was the upper body of my Latin teacherk, smoothly graftyu to the horse's trunk. "What a relief." the centaur said." I'd been cooped up in there do long, my fetlocks had fallen asleep. Now, come, Percy Jackson. Let's meet the other campers."