The Burning Maze

The first-person narrator, Apollo, proclaims that he will not tell this part of his story, which is the most humiliating in his 4,000 years of existence, but he relents and concedes that “record[ing] [his] shame for posterity” must be part of Zeus’s punishment. He also warns of much “suffering” to come (1).

Apollo’s story picks up with Meg, Grover, and Apollo proceeding through the Labyrinth. Apollo is sure that they are lost, but Grover insists that they are not. Apollo is annoyed that Grover is more intimidated by Meg, a daughter of Demeter, than by Apollo, a former god. Suddenly, Grover yells to retreat, and a blast of yellow fire explodes ahead. They run, with deadly birdlike creatures called strix in pursuit. Apollo orders Meg to block the corridor with “[m]agic plant stuff” (9). She tears open a packet of tomato seeds while Grover plays a jig on his panpipes, encouraging them to grow. The three block off the tunnel, but only after a strix flies through and scratches Apollo, paralyzing him. Killing the strix will cause them to become cursed, but the strix will kill them unless they kill it first.

The strix attacks. Grover communicates with it and learns that it has been ordered by the emperor to kill them. Apollo guesses at the identity of this third emperor. Meg whacks the strix into a wall, killing it. She and Grover try to reinforce their protective plant wall, but without soil and water, it is a losing battle. Meg duct-tapes the temporarily paralyzed Apollo to Grover’s back, and they climb a ramp toward an exit. Meg orders Apollo to consult with a magical tool called the Arrow of Dodona. The arrow, who denies Apollo’s claim that it uses Google to gain information, informs them that a plant called arbutus can repel strixes, but suddenly, the strixes overcome Meg’s tomato barrier.

Meg and Grover try to determine what an arbutus is. Meg throws seed packets toward the strixes while Apollo attempts to protect her with one of her scimitars. Just as a strix is about to slice into Apollo’s face, Grover screams, summoning the godlike power of Panic, and the strixes flee. Grover is exhausted from the effort of summoning his godlike abilities, and Meg is now paralyzed from a strix scratch. Meanwhile, the strixes are regrouping below.

Apollo begins regaining feeling in his body. Grover realizes that the so-called arbutus looks like strawberries. Meg throws fragaria, strawberry seeds, into the tunnel toward the advancing strixes while Grover plays on his panpipes and Apollo joins in with his ukulele. The rapidly growing strawberries scatter the strixes. Meg ponders whether the Labyrinth is helping them. The ceiling collapses, and the sunlight disintegrates the strixes. The scent of strawberries evokes nostalgic memories of Camp Half-Blood for Grover and Apollo. Apollo gives Meg ambrosia, and Grover announces that the Labyrinth has brought them to whatever is left of their base.

Apollo recounts having several “feverish dreams” (29). In one, he observes a woman in ancient dress shackled by molten chains before a lava-filled pool. Raising her arms in supplication, she laments her inability to spare two unnamed people. She says that Apollo must be told to come because he is the only one who can release her, although doing so is a trap. In the second dream, Apollo sees a cruel-faced young man receive a praetorian guard, who announces that he has killed the emperor. The guard then hails the young man as the new Caesar.

When Apollo wakes up in a desert near Palm Springs, Meg is still asleep. Strawberry plants seal their escape route, and something feels wrong about the excessive heat and acrid air. Apollo is disappointed to realize that he and his companions are in the ruins of a house that must have burned down years earlier. However, Grover is pleased by its “powerful natural energy” (35). He sadly notes that the drought, heat waves, earthquakes and forest fires plaguing the area are not all “normal natural disasters” (35). Meg wakes up and immediately wants to leave, but Grover encourages her to speak “to the others” (36) first, pointing out greenhouses to the north.

Inside one of the greenhouses, plants (mostly cacti) have taken over. Grover announces their presence, and gradually, dryads begin to emerge from the plants. Apollo meets Prickly Pear (Pear), Aloe Vera (Al), and Joshua, each of whom has a personality to match their plant form. They are at Aeithales, Greek for evergreen. Meg faints, and Al takes care of her. Grover and Apollo carry Meg to the Cistern, where they meet Mellie, a cloud nymph, and her satyr baby. She asks Grover to find Gleeson Hedge, her satyr husband, who has not returned from a shopping excursion. Grover and Apollo head off, leaving Meg with Mellie.

While searching for the military supply store where Mellie believes they will find Hedge, Grover and Apollo discuss what has been happening in the desert. Apollo has noticed the “resentful malevolence” (46) of the heat. Grover reveals that search parties of satyrs and dryads have canvassed the area, but few have returned. He reasons that if the emperor is guarding an Oracle, it would be placed within the maze, the source of the fire. Grover points out “a plume of yellow flame” (48) shooting out of the earth, adding that he has lost many friends in the search for its origins.

Apollo reflects on the fact that humans have destroyed the natural world; he is unsurprised that Pan has faded away. Grover believes that the emperor, who uses the monogram N.H. to stand for “Neo Helios” (Greek for “New Sun”), has created the “burning maze” and hidden the oracle inside it. (Apollo believes that the Oracle is really the Erythraean Sibyl, the woman from his dream. Privately, Apollo remembers a specific emperor who used that the phrase Neo Helios as one of his titles. He shudders. They arrive at Macro’s Military Madness and see Hedge’s Pinto parked out front.

The interior is filled with camping and military paraphernalia of all kinds. Apollo feels a sense of foreboding. They find Hedge in the firearms department. He greets Grover cheerfully and urges Apollo to do more core exercises.

The bald, seven-foot-tall manager approaches, asking Apollo if he is “the Apollo” (57). When Apollo admits who he is, Macro declares himself a big fan, then orders his employees to roll Apollo up in a red carpet and kill the satyrs. Trying to save his companions, Apollo argues that the satyrs are part of his retinue, but Macro says that the emperor will only want Apollo. Macro is determined to get back into the emperor’s good graces after his malfunctioning troops disappointed him. Apollo realizes that the store employees are automatons. The manager is the praetor from his dream who assassinated Emperor Tiberius and hailed the new Caesar. Apollo now recognizes him as Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus. He tells the satyrs to run.

Hedge and Apollo go in one direction while Grover goes in another. Hedge decapitates one of the automatons with a roundhouse kick, but Macro informs them that he has fifty more in storage. Apollo and Hedge run for an exit, but Macro has locked the bomb-proof doors. As his automatons advance, Macro remarks that he did not believe the sorceress when she predicted that Apollo would be unable to resist the maze. Just then, Grover drops a display on Macro and his automatons, after which he, Apollo, and Hedge run for another exit.

Macro says that he has called the Horse. This statement terrifies Apollo, but he does not know why. They run into an Employees Only area filled with dormant automatons. Grover uses an override command that a friend of his taught him, and when the automatons wake up, they are loyal to Apollo. Grover tells Apollo to order “Plan Thermopylae.” As Macro and his automatons burst in, Apollo’s newfound automaton troops encircle him, but they seem to be executing the wrong plan and are “about to sacrifice themselves in a fiery explosion” (73). Grover and Gleeson charm open a loading bay door with music, and the three narrowly escape the ensuing explosion.

In the wake of the explosion, Apollo lands in a dumpster with Grover and Hedge. They hear the sound “of hooves against asphalt” (76) and hear the voice of Incitatus, a talking horse, as he speaks on the phone to someone called “Big C.” Big C is enraged to learn that Macro’s store has been destroyed. After Incitatus leaves, Apollo puts the pieces together and reveals that he knows the third emperor’s identity.

They return to the Cistern and reconvene with the desert-plant dryads. Grover recounts their adventures through the Labyrinth. He adds that the maze is set up to trap Apollo, who then explains that part of his penance to Zeus involves freeing Oracles, and he must now free the Sibyl of Erythraea. When Grover mentions the talking horse, Apollo explains that their current emperor antagonist is Caligula.

Apollo warns that Caligula is completely amoral and is skilled at trapping his enemies. Grover asks how Caligula died “the first time,” when he was an emperor of ancient Rome. Apollo reveals that his guards killed Caligula, which is sure to have made the emperor even more paranoid. Revisiting the lines of the prophecy, Apollo surmises that they must find Caligula’s base, free the Erythraean Sybil from the maze, and save Camp Jupiter. But no one has a plan.

Hedge says that he and Mellie may know something, but Mellie is reluctant to share. She had been working for Piper McLean’s father, but something went wrong. After dreaming of the maze, Piper attempted to reach its center with her boyfriend, Jason, but they returned claiming to have failed; they were clearly rattled. Mellie is unwilling to return to the McLeans, but Grover agrees to take Apollo and Meg there. Meg then reveals that Aeithales was built by her father.

Immediately following this revelation, Meg leaves, and Apollo follows, asking if she wants “to talk about it” (96). She holds out her wrist; when Apollo takes it, he is plunged into her memories and watches as the five-year-old Meg tours the flourishing greenhouses with her father, who shows her seven faintly glowing seeds that they will plant together when the time is right. Later, the young Meg overhears her father having an emotional phone conversation in Aeithales’ living room, which is constructed from trees and plants that have grown into the shapes of furniture. Dandelion yellow papers are strewn across his desk. Finally, Meg and her father flee in the dark of night as Aeithales burns.

When Meg pulls her hand away, Apollo returns to the present. He asks if she knows what her father was doing at Aeithales, a place sacred to nature spirits, but she is unsure. When Apollo notes that Caligula destroyed Aeithales, Meg pledges to secure Jason and Piper’s help. They will find Caligula, explore the Labyrinth, free the Sibyl, and end the fires. Apollo thinks of his vision of the Sibyl. He wonders why she would apologize and ponders the nature of the trap that has been set for him.