Rick Riordan
The Sea Monsters - 02
Tyson had been the result. I mean, I'd read the myths about Cyclopes. I even remembered that they
were often Poseidon's children. But I'd never really processed that this made them my ... family.
Until I had Tyson living with me in the next bunk.
And then there were the comments from the other campers. Suddenly, I wasn't Percy
Jackson, the cool guy who'd retrieved Zeus's lightning bolt last summer. Now I was Percy Jackson,
the poor schmuck with the ugly monster for a brother.
"He's not my real brother!" I protested whenever Tyson wasn't around. "He's more like a half-
brother on the monstrous side of the family. Like ... a half-brother twice removed, or something."
Nobody bought it.
I admit—I was angry at my dad. I felt like being his son was now a joke.
Annabeth tried to make me feel better. She suggested we team up for the chariot race to
take our minds off our problems. Don't get me wrong—we both hated Tantalus and we were worried
sick about camp—but we didn't know what to do about it. Until we could come up with some brilliant
plan to save Thalia's tree, we figured we might as well go along with the races. After all, Annabeth's
mom, Athena, had invented the chariot, and my dad had created horses. Together we would own
that track.
One morning Annabeth and I were sitting by the canoe lake sketching chariot designs when
some jokers from Aphrodite's cabin walked by and asked me if I needed to borrow some eyeliner for
my eye ... "Oh sorry, eyes.”
As they walked away laughing, Annabeth grumbled, "Just ignore them, Percy. It isn't your
fault you have a monster for a brother."
"He's not my brother!" I snapped. "And he's not a monster, either!"
Annabeth raised her eyebrows. "Hey, don't get mad at me! And technically, he is a monster."
"Well you gave him permission to enter the camp."
"Because it was the only way to save your life! I mean ... I'm sorry, Percy, I didn't
expect Poseidon to claim him. Cyclopes are the most deceitful, treacherous—"
"He is not! What have you got against Cyclopes, any-way?
Annabeth's ears turned pink. I got the feeling there was something she wasn't telling me—
something bad.
"Just forget it," she said. "Now, the axle for this chariot—"
"You're treating him like he's this horrible thing," I said. "He saved my life."
Annabeth threw down her pencil and stood. "Then maybe you should design a chariot with
him."
"Maybe I should."
"Fine!"
"Fine!"
She stormed off and left me feeling even worse than before.
The next couple of days, I tried to keep my mind off my problems.
Silena Beauregard, one of the nicer girls from Aphrodite's cabin, gave me my first riding
lesson on a pegasus. She explained that there was only one immortal winged horse named
Pegasus, who still wandered free somewhere in the skies, but over the eons he'd sired a lot of
children, none quite so fast or heroic, but all named after the first and greatest.
Being the son of the sea god, I never liked going into the air. My dad had this rivalry with
Zeus, so I tried to stay out of the lord of the sky's domain as much as possible. But riding a winged
horse felt different. It didn't make me nearly as nervous as being in an airplane. Maybe that was
because my dad had created horses out of sea foam, so the pegasi were sort of ... neutral territory.
I could understand their thoughts. I wasn't surprised when my pegasus went galloping over the
treetops or chased a flock of seagulls into a cloud.
The problem was that Tyson wanted to ride the "chicken ponies," too, but the pegasi got
skittish whenever he approached. I told them telepathically that Tyson wouldn't hurt them, but they
didn't seem to believe me. That made Tyson cry.
The only person at camp who had no problem with Tyson was Beckendorf from the
Hephaestus cabin. The blacksmith god had always worked with Cyclopes in his forges, so
Beckendorf took Tyson down to the armory to teach him metalworking. He said he'd have Tyson
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