Karpoi

She looked around and noticed he was right. The air had become perfectly still.
“So?” she asked.
Frank swallowed. “So why is the grass still moving?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Hazel saw dark shapes ripple through the field.
“Hazel!” Frank tried to grab her arms, but it was too late.
Something knocked him backward. Then a force like agrassy hurricane wrapped around Hazel and dragged her into the fields.

Hazel was an expert on weird. She’d seen her mother possessed by an earth goddess. She’d created a giant out of gold. She’d destroyed an island, died, and come back from the Underworld.
But getting kidnapped by a field of grass? That was new.
She felt as if she were trapped in a funnel cloud of plants. She’d heard of modern-day singers jumping into crowds of fans and getting passed overhead by thousands of hands. She imagined this was similar — only she was moving a thousand times faster, and the grass blades weren’t adoring fans.
She couldn’t sit up. She couldn’t touch the ground. Her sword was still in her bedroll, strapped to her back, but she couldn’t reach it. The plants kept her off balance, tossing her around, slicing her face and arms. She could barely make out the stars through the tumble of green, yellow, and black.
Frank’s shouting faded into the distance.
It was hard to think clearly, but Hazel knew one thing: She was moving fast. Wherever she was being taken, she’d soon be too far away for her friends to find her.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the tumbling and tossing. She sent her thoughts into the earth below her. Gold, silver — she’d settle for anything that might disrupt her kidnappers.
She felt nothing. Riches under the earth — zero.

The yellow-diapered Cupid snarled. “We are the karpoi, spirits of the grain.

A HEARTBEAT, Hazel WAS just as stunned as the karpoi. Then Frank and Percy burst into the open and began to massacre every source of fiber they could find. Frank shot an arrow through Barley, who crumbled into seeds. Percy slashed Riptide through Sorghum and charged toward Millet and Oats. Hazel jumped down and joined the fight.
Within minutes, the karpoi had been reduced to piles of seeds and various breakfast cereals. Wheat started to re-form, but Percy pulled a lighter from his pack and sparked a flame.


Her mouth tightened. She drew back her shoulder blades as if preparing for a measles shot - something painful but necessary. She placed her hand on the karpos’s curly scalp. ‘Peaches,’ she said in a small but firm voice, ‘get the matchbox.’
The karpos sprang into action. Nero barely had time to blink before Peaches ripped the box from his hand and jumped back to Meg’s side.

 SoN ch.11,12,23
THO pg.290