The kids camp out in the woods that night, and Percy and Grover stay up late so that Grover can tell him the story of Pan.  And also so that we can get a hamfisted message about how awesome nature is compared to icky, stinky cities and such.  Because nothing good has ever come from technology and civilization.  We were so much better off as a species when we lived in tiny agrarian communities without electricity and also you could die from the sniffles.

I’m not anti-green or anything, but the stark “good vs bad” view that so many of these messages take really bothers me.  Plus, earlier we had that whole thing with Demeter being un-powerful.  So…is it because Pan is a god instead of a goddess, or because he’s in charge of ‘wild’ nature versus ‘cultivated’ nature?  Harnessing the power of plants in order to be able to feed more people and develop as a culture is…weak?

They talk about how Grover wants a ‘searchers license’ so he can go look for Pan.  Then they talk about how Grover’s first assignment was to bring Annabeth to camp, and of course that ended in disaster.  Then they talk about (lots of topic jumping in this chapter) how Grover and Annabeth think there’s something odd about their quest, like how the Furies kept screeching ‘where is it’ instead of just outright killing everyone.  So that confuses them, but they don’t really come to any conclusions.

When Percy goes to sleep, he has another dream, this time about looking down a deep, dark pit and talking to some unseen creepy voice.  The voice promises to bring his mother back to life if Percy brings the bolt and helps him rise out of the pit, but all these spirits of the dead are around him telling him to wake up.

When he finally gets up, he finds Grover talking to a pink poodle.  The poodle apparently doesn’t like Percy, so Percy doesn’t like it either.

“Percy,” Annabeth said. “I said hello to the poodle. You say hello to the poodle.” The poodle growled.

I said hello to the poodle.

The book’s humor really is at its best when it’s being dry like this.

The poodle says that it ran away from home, but it’s willing to go back so that the kids can collect reward money and buy train tickets.

So they do that, and then skip over two days during which they just sit on the train.

Wait…

The reward was only $200.  The book explicitly states that it’s an Amtrak train.  They’re in New Jersey.

New Jersey to Los Angeles Union Station…well, first of all, there is no direct train rout that goes all the way west.  But they can get from Trenton to Chicago on the Cardinal Line…for $191 for a single ticket.  So, given the amount of money they got, only one kid can travel on the train, and they can only get a third of the way to their destination. 

I guess they’d only have to buy two tickets and Annabeth could use her invisible cap when the ticket-taker comes by, but still.

While on the bus, they see that Percy’s antics on the bus made it into the newspaper.

Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson, wanted for questioning in the Long Island disappearance of his mother two weeks ago, is shown here fleeing from the bus where he accosted several elderly female passengers.

First of all, there’s no reason for them to suspect that Percy was involved in his mother’s disappearance, except to assume that he disappeared with her.  They both went missing at the same time, and in such cases, it’s generally assumed that the parent took the kid, not that the kid did something to the parent.  True, Percy’s got a history, but it’s mostly of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, not of him being openly violent.  Gabe can cry until he’s blue in the face about Percy being a menace, but he’s still just a 12 year-old’s version of menace, and at no point in his history have we heard that he’s done something to actually hurt other people.

Second, Percy was invisible until everyone got off the bus, and before that happened, the ‘old ladies’ were already attacking Annabeth and Grover.  Percy wasn’t visible to the rest of the bus patrons until he got off the bus, at which point the old ladies were still inside.  So the tourist snapped a picture of Percy with his sword out, but there was no one around to see him actually do any fighting.  If anything, they should remember three old ladies attacking two kids, right before the bus got possessed and ran itself off the road.

Annabeth tells him not to worry about, so Percy stares out the window and notices mythological things going on in the countryside, like centaurs and gold lions.  No one else notices because:

The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.

Lies!  I love taking the train.  There are tons of people who stare out the windows.  Especially those that don’t like to read and just put on headphones and stare instead.

Turns out their reward money got them to Denver instead of all the way to LA, so maybe prices were different when this book came out.  Still, it was less than ten years ago.  Even if you say they only bought two tickets, to go twice as far that would have to mean that prices in 2005 were a quarter of what they are now.  And there’s still no direct route between New Jersey and literally anything west of New Orleans.

Percy tells Annabeth about his dream, and she says it doesn’t sound like Hades.  Then she proceeds with the conversation as if it really is Hades in these dreams, despite pointing out that the whole thing is un-Hades-like.  Annabeth, I thought you were the smart one?

Percy, you can’t barter with Hades. You know that, right? He’s deceitful, heartless, and greedy.

No, one of his defining traits is that he’s extremely just and fair, but he’s so strict that he’ll flip a lid the minute you try and cross him.  That’s kind of the opposite of ‘deceitful.’

Annabeth does have a history with Hades, since he sent the monsters after Thalia and she got caught in the crossfire.  Fine.  But she’s supposed to be smart, and there’s plenty of reasons to hate Hades without painting him as something he’s not.  You can hate him for being so strict that he’s willing to kill children for the crimes of their parents and doesn’t care about collateral damage; that’s pretty worthy of mountains of resentment.  I don’t understand why they feel like turning him into the devil when he works just find as an antagonist on his own.

Annabeth give us a little history about her own family.  Apparently her dad didn’t want a half-god baby and so her childhood wasn’t exactly happy.

Whenever something dangerous happened—you know, something with monsters—they would both look at me resentfully, like, ‘How dare you put our family at risk.’

Well…yeah.  I mean, come on, MONSTERS.  It’s not like they resented you for having special powers or being smart or something.  They did it because MONSTERS KEPT ATTACKING.  Still sucks for Annabeth, but I can hardly say it’s unreasonable on the parents’ part.

They have a three-hour layover in St. Louis, and Annabeth wants to go ride up the Gateway Arch, because she’s the smart one and thinks you can actually get to the Arch, ride up, and get down and back to the train in three hours.  They ride up to the top of the arch, and in their elevator is a large lady with a tiny dog, and she makes it clear that she’ll be important later by actually speaking.  Since, you know, no one except monsters and immortals have actually said a word so far in this novel.  (And the kids.)

When they go down, Percy is separated from the other two because the elevator car is too full.  The lady with the dog turns out to be Echidna, and the dog is actually a chimera, and she starts to attack him once the other two are gone.  Percy tries to fight the chimera for a while, but he loses his sword and the thing’s tail stings him and poisons him.  In the process of the fight, they also light the carpet on fire and rip a hole in the side of the building. 

As Percy gets stalled at the hole in the wall, Echidna taunts him, tells him to jump since there’s a river below and, ostensibly, water won’t hurt him.  Echidna tells him has no faith and moves to kill him, so Percy jumps out. 

These creatures sure are chatty, but I can’t really make sense of what they’re trying to get across.  They keep telling him that the gods are just using him, that the gods are ‘faithless’ and don’t care about the demigods, and okay fine.  But…this book has been anything but unsubtle so far, and it’s confusing why the monsters are chatting like this.  What are they trying to do?  Convince him that gods suck, right before they kill him?  Are they trying to accomplish something with all this blathering, or is there just some quota of ominous sayings that has to be met?