The Burning Maze (The Trials of Apollo #3)(7)

Below us, the strixes’ cries echoed through the Labyrinth. Their screeching already sounded like it was turning from fear – Fly away! – to confusion: Why are we flying away?

I tried to wriggle my feet. To my surprise, I could now feel my toes inside my socks.

‘Can someone cut me loose?’ I asked. ‘I think the poison is losing strength.’

From her horizontal position, Meg used a scimitar to saw me out of the duct tape. The three of us lined up with our backs literally to the wall – three sweaty, sad, pathetic pieces of strix bait waiting to die. Below us, the squawking of the doom birds got louder. Soon they’d be back, angrier than ever. About fifty feet above us, just visible now in the dim glint of Meg’s swords, our ramp dead-ended at a domed brick ceiling.

‘So much for an exit,’ Grover said. ‘I thought for sure … This shaft looks so much like …’ He shook his head, as if he couldn’t bear to tell us what he’d hoped.

‘I’m not dying here,’ Meg grumbled.

Her appearance said otherwise. She had bloody knuckles and skinned knees. Her green dress, a prized gift from Percy Jackson’s mother, looked like it had been used as a sabre-toothed tiger’s scratching post. She had ripped off her left legging and used it to staunch the bleeding cut on her thigh, but the fabric was already soaked through.

Nevertheless, her eyes shone defiantly. The rhinestones still glittered on the tips of her cat-eye glasses. I’d learned never to count out Meg McCaffrey while her rhinestones still glittered.

She rummaged through her seed packages, squinting at the labels. ‘Roses. Daffodils. Squash. Carrots.’

‘No …’ Grover bumped his fist against his forehead. ‘Arbutus is like … a flowering tree. Argh, I should know this.’

I sympathized with his memory problems. I should have known many things: the weaknesses of strixes, the nearest secret exit from the Labyrinth, Zeus’s private number so I could call him and plead for my life. But my mind was blank. My legs had begun to tremble – perhaps a sign I would soon be able to walk again – but this didn’t cheer me up. I had nowhere to go, except to choose whether I wanted to die at the top of this chamber or the bottom.

Meg kept shuffling seed packets. ‘Rutabaga, wisteria, pyracantha, strawberries –’

‘Strawberries!’ Grover yelped so loudly I thought he was trying for another blast of Panic. ‘That’s it! The arbutus is a strawberry tree!’

Meg frowned. ‘Strawberries don’t grow on trees. They’re genus Fragaria, part of the rose family.’

‘Yes, yes, I know!’ Grover rolled his hands like he couldn’t get the words out fast enough. ‘And arbutus is in the heath family, but –’

‘What are you two talking about?’ I demanded. I wondered if they were sharing the Arrow of Dodona’s Wi-Fi connection to look up information on botany.com. ‘We’re about to die, and you’re arguing about plant genera?’

‘Fragaria might be close enough!’ Grover insisted. ‘Arbutus fruit looks like strawberries. That’s why it’s called a strawberry tree. I met an arbutus dryad once. We got in this big argument about it. Besides, I specialize in strawberry-growing. All the satyrs from Camp Half-Blood do!’

Meg stared doubtfully at her packet of strawberry seeds. ‘I dunno.’

Below us, a dozen strixes burst forth from the mouth of the tunnel, shrieking in a chorus of pre-disembowelment fury.

‘TRY THE FRAGGLE ROCK!’ I yelled.

‘Fragaria,’ Meg corrected.

‘WHATEVER!’

Rather than throwing her strawberry seeds into the void, Meg ripped open the packet and shook them out along the edge of the ramp with maddening slowness.

‘Hurry.’ I fumbled for my bow. ‘We’ve got maybe thirty seconds.’

‘Hold on.’ Meg tapped out the last of the seeds.

‘Fifteen seconds!’

‘Wait.’ Meg tossed aside the packet. She placed her hands over the seeds like she was about to play the keyboard (which, by the way, she can’t do well, despite my efforts to teach her).

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Go.’

Grover raised his pipes and began a frantic version of ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ in triple time. I forgot about my bow and grabbed my ukulele, joining him in the song. I didn’t know if it would help, but, if I was going to get ripped apart, at least I wanted to go out playing the Beatles.

Just as the wave of strixes was about to hit, the seeds exploded like a battery of fireworks. Green streamers arced across the void, anchoring against the far wall and forming a row of vines that reminded me of the strings of a giant lute. The strixes could have easily flown through the gaps, but instead they went crazy, veering to avoid the plants and colliding with each other in mid-air.

Meanwhile, the vines thickened, leaves unfurled, white flowers bloomed and strawberries ripened, filling the air with their sweet fragrance.

The chamber rumbled. Wherever the strawberry plants touched the stone, the brick cracked and dissolved, giving the strawberries an easier place to root.

Meg lifted her hands from her imaginary keyboard. ‘Is the Labyrinth … helping?’

‘I don’t know!’ I said, strumming furiously on an F minor 7. ‘But don’t stop!’