The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(26)

My nerves were shot. I considered throttling my young master and yelling, TELL ME NOW!, but I decided that might not be sensitive to her feelings.

‘Would you like to talk about it?’ I asked gently.

‘No.’

Not a huge surprise. Even under the best of circumstances, Meg and conversation were awkward acquaintances.

‘If Aeithales is the place mentioned in the prophecy,’ I said, ‘your ancient roots, then it might be important to know about it so … we can stay alive?’

Meg looked over. She didn’t order me to leap into the strawberry pit, or even to shut up. Instead, she said, ‘Here,’ and grabbed my wrist.

I had become used to waking visions – being yanked backwards down memory lane whenever godly experiences overloaded my mortal neurons. This was different. Rather than my own past, I found myself plunged into Meg McCaffrey’s, seeing her memories from her point of view.

I stood in one of the greenhouses before the plants grew wild. Well-ordered rows of new cactus pups lined the metal shelves, each clay pot fitted with a digital thermometer and moisture gauge. Misting hoses and grow lights hovered overhead. The air was warm, but pleasantly so, and smelled of freshly turned earth.

Wet gravel crunched under my feet as I followed my father on his rounds – Meg’s father, I mean.

From my vantage point as a tiny girl, I saw him smiling down at me. As Apollo I’d met him before in other visions – a middle-aged man with dark curly hair and a broad, freckled nose. I’d witnessed him in New York, giving Meg a red rose from her mother, Demeter. I’d also seen his dead body splayed on the steps of Grand Central Station, his chest a ruin of knife or claw marks, on the day Nero became Meg’s stepfather.

In this memory of the greenhouse, Mr McCaffrey didn’t look much younger than in those other visions. The emotions I sensed from Meg told me she was about five years old, the same age she’d been when she and her father wound up in New York. But Mr McCaffrey looked so much happier in this scene, so much more at ease. As Meg gazed into her father’s face, I was overwhelmed by her pure joy and contentment. She was with Daddy. Life was wonderful.

Mr McCaffrey’s green eyes sparkled. He picked up a potted cactus pup and knelt to show Meg. ‘I call this one Hercules,’ he said, ‘because he can withstand anything!’

He flexed his arm and said, ‘GRRRR!’ which sent little Meg into a fit of giggles.

‘Er-klees!’ she said. ‘Show me more plants!’

Mr McCaffrey set Hercules back on the shelf, then held up one finger like a magician: Watch this! He dug into the pocket of his denim shirt and presented his cupped fist to Meg.

‘Try to open it,’ he said.

Meg pulled at his fingers. ‘I can’t!’

‘You can. You’re very strong. Try really hard!’

‘GRRR!’ said little Meg. This time she managed to open his hand, revealing seven hexagonal seeds, each the size of a nickel. Inside their thick green skins, the seeds glowed faintly, making them look like a fleet of tiny UFOs.

‘Ooh,’ said Meg. ‘Can I eat them?’

Her father laughed. ‘No, sweetheart. These are very special seeds. Our family has been trying to produce seeds like this for –’ he whistled softly – ‘a long time. And when we plant them …’

‘What?’ Meg asked breathlessly.

‘They will be very special,’ her dad promised. ‘Even stronger than Hercules!’

‘Plant them now!’

Her father ruffled her hair. ‘Not yet, Meg. They’re not ready. But when it’s time I’ll need your help. We’ll plant them together. Will you promise to help me?’

‘I promise,’ she said, with all the solemnity of her five-year-old heart.

The scene shifted. Meg padded barefoot into the beautiful living room of Aeithales, where her father stood facing a wall of curved glass, overlooking the night-time city lights of Palm Springs. He was talking on the phone, his back to Meg. She was supposed to be asleep, but something had woken her – maybe a bad dream, maybe the sense that Daddy was upset.

‘No, I don’t understand,’ he was saying into the phone. ‘You have no right. This property isn’t … Yes, but my research can’t … That’s impossible!’

Meg crept forward. She loved being in the living room. Not just for the pretty view but for the way the polished hardwood felt against her bare feet – smooth and cool and silky, like she was gliding across a living sheet of ice. She loved the plants Daddy kept on the shelves and in giant pots all around the room – cacti blooming in dozens of colours, Joshua trees that formed living columns, holding up the roof, growing into the ceiling and spreading across it in a web of fuzzy branches and green spiky clusters. Meg was too young to understand that Joshua trees weren’t supposed to do that. It seemed completely reasonable to her that vegetation would weave together to help form the house.

Meg also loved the big circular well in the centre of the room – the Cistern, Daddy called it – railed off for safety, but so wonderful for how it cooled the whole house and made the place feel safe and anchored. Meg loved to race down the ramp and dip her feet in the cool water of the pool at the bottom, though Daddy always said, Don’t soak too long! You might turn into a plant!

Most of all, she loved the big desk where Daddy worked – the trunk of a mesquite tree that grew straight up through the floor and plunged back down again, like the coil of a sea serpent breaching the waves, leaving just enough of an arc to form the piece of furniture. The top of the trunk was smooth and level, a perfect work surface. Tree hollows provided cubbyholes for storage. Leafy sprigs curved up from the desktop, making a frame to hold Daddy’s computer monitor. Meg had once asked if he’d hurt the tree when he carved the desk out of it, but Daddy had chuckled.