Percy Jackson's Greek Gods (Percy Jackson and the Olympians companion #5.5) - Rick Riordan Page 0,134

and off they swam. If you ever see a dolphin with an eye patch, chattering “Arrr, matey!” now you’ll know why.

The only pirate left was the navigator, who had stayed at the wheel, too terrified to move.

Dionysus smiled at him. “You’re the only one who recognized me as a god. I like you!”

The navigator made a squeaking sound.

“Can you take me back, please?” Dionysus asked.

“M-m-my lord,” the navigator managed. “I would, but with no crew, I can’t sail far. Plus the grapevines in the rigging…”

“Oh, right.” Dionysus scratched his head. “Sorry about that.”

The god gazed across the water. About a mile to the east, he spotted a small island. “How about there?”

“Erm, that would be Naxos, my lord. I think…”

“Perfect. Can you just drop me off? I’ll find my own way back to the army.”

So Dionysus ended up on the island of Naxos, which was uninhabited except for a beautiful young lady, who Dionysus found weeping by the edge of a stream in the woods.

She sounded so heartbroken that Dionysus sat next to her and took her hand. “My dear, what’s wrong?”

She didn’t even seem startled, as if she didn’t care about anything anymore.

“My—my boyfriend dumped me,” she said.

Dionysus’s heart twisted into a pretzel. Despite her red puffy eyes and disheveled hair, the girl was absolutely gorgeous.

“Who on earth would be so stupid as to dump you?” Dionysus asked.

“His…his name was Theseus,” the girl said. “I’m Princess Ariadne, by the way.”

She told Dionysus her sad story—how she’d helped this handsome guy Theseus escape from her father’s maze, which was called the Labyrinth. Theseus had killed the Minotaur, blah, blah, blah. That’s a whole other story. In the end, Theseus had promised to take Ariadne home with him to Athens. On the way, he stopped at Naxos for fresh water, dumped her on the beach, and sailed away.

And you thought breaking up by texting was low.

Dionysus was furious. If Theseus had been around, the god would’ve turned him into a bunch of grapes and stomped him.

The god comforted Ariadne. He summoned wine and food, and they began to talk. Dionysus was good company. After a while, Ariadne began to smile. She even laughed when Dionysus told her about the pirates. (I guess she had a strange sense of humor.)

As quick as that, the two of them fell in love.

“I will take you with me, my dear,” Dionysus promised. “I will never leave you. When I ascend to my throne on Mount Olympus, you will be my queen for eternity.”

Dionysus kept his promise. He married Ariadne, and when he was finally recognized as a god and became the twelfth Olympian, he made Ariadne his immortal wife. Oh, sure, he still had occasional flings with mortals. He was a god, after all. But as far as Greek stories go, they lived happily ever after.

Dionysus’s last big adventure on earth, before he became a full-time god: he decided to invade India.

Why?

Why not?

He had traveled all over the Mediterranean and into Egypt and Syria, but whenever he tried to spread the good news about wine farther east, he always got stopped by angry locals. Maybe that’s because Mesopotamia was where they invented beer. Maybe they didn’t want any beverage competition.

Anyway, he decided to make one final push to expand his market share. As far as the Greeks were concerned, India was pretty much the end of the world, so Dionysus decided to go there, take over, teach them about wine, and come back home, preferably in time for supper.

His drunken followers gathered by the thousands. Some stories say that Hercules joined Dionysus for the expedition, and they had some major drinking contests along the way. Other stories say that the twin sons of Hephaestus, the Kabeiroi, rode into battle on a mechanical chariot and fought bravely. A couple of times, they got a little too brave and were surrounded by enemies, at which point Hephaestus himself had to come down, spray the enemy with his divine flamethrower, and bring his kids back to safety.

Dionysus rode at the head of his army in a golden chariot pulled by two centaurs. A lot of towns surrendered to him in Syria. The drunken army made it all the way to the Euphrates River and constructed a bridge to get them across—the first time Greeks had gotten that far.

The bridge isn’t there anymore. What did you expect? It was made by a bunch of drunks. It probably fell apart in about a week.

Everything was going great—until the army reached