THE BATTLE OF THE LABYRINTH Percy Jackson ... - No one's invited.

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the lake, but I was really staring at Calypso as she worked, the way she brushed her hair over her
shoulder, and the little strand that fell in her face whenever she knelt to dig in the garden. Sometimes she
would hold out her hand and birds would fly out of the woods to settle on her arm—lorikeets, parrots,
doves. She would tell them good morning, ask how it was going back at the nest, and they would chirp
for a while, then fly off cheerfully. Calypso’s eyes gleamed. She would look at me and we’d share a
smile, but almost immediately she’d get that sad expression again and turn away. I didn’t understand
what was bothering her.
One night we were eating dinner together at the beach. Invisible servants had set up a table with beef
stew and apple cider, which may not sound all that exciting, but that’s because you haven’t tasted it. I
hadn’t even noticed the invisible servants when I first got to the island, but that’s because you haven’t
tasted it. I hadn’t even noticed the invisible servants when I first got to the island, but after a while I
became aware of the beds making themselves, meals cooking on their own, clothes being washed and
folded by unseen hands.
Anyway, Calypso and I were sitting at dinner, and she looked beautiful in the candlelight. I was telling
her about New York and Camp Half-Blood, and then I started telling her about the time Grover had
eaten an apple while we were playingHacky Sack with it. She laughed, showing off her amazing smile,
and our eyes met. Then she dropped her gaze.
“There it is again,” I said.
“What?”
“You keep pulling away, like you’re trying not to enjoy yourself.”
She kept her eyes on her glass of cider. “As I told you, Percy, I have been punished. Cursed, you might
say.”
“How?Tell me. I want to help.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
“Tell me what the punishment is.”
She covered her half-finished stew with a napkin, and immediately an invisible servant whisked the bowl
away. “Percy, this island,Ogygia , is my home, my birthplace. But it is also my prison. I am under…house
arrest, I guess you would call it. I will never visit this Manhattan of yours.Or anywhere else. I am alone
here.”
“Because your father was Atlas.”
She nodded. “The gods do not trust their enemies.And rightly so. I should not complain. Some of the
prisons are not nearly as nice as mine.”
“But that’s not fair,” I said. “Just because you’re related doesn’t mean you support him. This other
daughter I knew, Zoë, Nightshade—she fought against him. She wasn’t imprisoned.”
“But, Percy,” Calypso said gently, “Idid support him in the first war. He is my father.”
“What?But the Titans are evil!”