The Tyrant's Tomb

Cooking with Pranjal
Chickweed and unicorn horn
Slow-basted zombie
HOME. SUCH A WONDERFUL word.
I had no idea what it meant, but it sounded nice.
Somewhere along the trail back to camp, my mind must have detached
from my body. I don’t remember passing out. I don’t remember reaching the
valley. But at some point, my consciousness drifted away like an escaped
helium balloon.
I dreamed of homes. Had I ever really had one?
Delos was my birthplace, but only because my pregnant mother, Leto,
took refuge there to escape Hera’s wrath. The island served as an emergency
sanctuary for my sister and me, too, but it never felt like home any more than
the backseat of a taxi would feel like home to a child born on the way to a
hospital.
Mount Olympus? I had a palace there. I visited for the holidays. But it
always felt more like the place my dad lived with my stepmom.
The Palace of the Sun? That was Helios’s old crib. I’d just redecorated.
Even Delphi, home of my greatest Oracle, had originally been the lair of
Python. Try as you might, you can never get the smell of old snakeskin out
of a volcanic cavern.
Sad to say, in my four-thousand-plus years, the times I’d felt most at
home had all happened during the past few months: at Camp Half-Blood,
sharing a cabin with my demigod children; at the Waystation with Emma, Jo,