Chapter 10 The Mists of Mourning
With no moon or sun parading their endless dance across the sky, Danae had nothing to mark the flow of time except her own weariness as they continued to trudge across the fog-bound plain.
Her mind still reeled from the sight of Charon’s mutilated tongue and the collar around his neck, but she was too exhausted to attempt to divine what had happened to him.
Her feet were blistered by the time the ferryman stopped in the shadow of a large black rock, rearing out of the ground like a curved claw.
Charon drove his glowing staff into the earth, so it stood tall on its own, then sank down to sit cross-legged on the soil beside it. Danae followed his lead, tugging the length of her dress over her legs. She shivered. She felt so small in this vast sea of earth and mist.
From the folds of his cloak, Charon pulled out the waterskin and another cloth-wrapped parcel.
He placed both on the earth and nudged the skin towards Danae.
She took it and drank. Charon then passed her a strip of cured meat that tasted like salted beef.
She chewed, watching the shade lift a piece to the mouth beneath his hood.
She thought back to a night before she’d joined the Argonauts.
She’d broken her journey in a mountain village with Heracles and his crew, where she’d followed a shade carrying the unconscious barkeep’s boy to a cart she now realized had been driven by Charon – or another shade wearing the same charcoal-grey cloak.
A cart full of drugged bodies. The Missing, stolen from their families, never to return.
‘I know shades take the Missing. Two years ago, I saw one take a baby from Naxos. Was the child brought here, to the Underworld?’
Her body felt taut as a trapped strand of hair as she waited for a response.
Charon shook his head.
A sip of breath slipped from her lips. ‘Do you know where the shade took him?’
Again, the ferryman shook his head.
The air sagged from her lungs, and she turned away from him, curling up on the chill ground.
She drifted in and out of fitful sleep. At one point she dreamed the ferryman lay his cloak over her, tucking its soft corners under her limbs.
Danae woke suddenly. She stared across the misted earth, her breath heavy in her chest. In the distance, the pale plants swayed despite the lack of wind, as though disturbed by an unseen current.
Weary as she was, sleep could not be recaptured, so she sat up and wiped the damp soil from her cheek.
As she gazed across the misty plain, she thought she could see figures moving in the haze.
She rose silently, Charon’s cloak sliding to the ground with a hiss.
She glanced at the ferryman, but he was as still as the rock he slept against, his staff laid beside him like a fallen warrior put to rest with his sword.
She took a step away from the rock, then another.
The mist drifted around her ankles, like she was walking on the surface of a cloud.
Her eyes remained fixed on the horizon and the dark shapes moving in the dim light.
As she walked, she thought she could hear music.
Strange lilting sounds that were a medley of hissing and clicking, tangled with a harmony of soft notes sung from human throats.
Her heart began to beat a rhythm of hope in her chest. Were they ghosts?
As she drew closer, the forms solidified until she could make out two hooded figures drifting across the plain, stooping occasionally to pick the plants. Their cloaks were as pale grey as the mist, tattered lengths rasping across the soil.
‘Are you dead?’ Danae asked tentatively.
One of the figures turned.
She gasped, throwing her hands over her eyes as she looked into the face of a beautiful woman, her mouth stretched by a pair of ivory tusks, her hair a mass of writhing snakes.
Gorgons.
Danae’s heart thundered as she waited for the cold creep of her limbs turning to stone.
Everyone knew the tale of Medusa, the woman Poseidon had raped in the temple of Athena.
Enraged at the violation of her holy sanctuary, the Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare had transformed Medusa into the third gorgon and, like her sisters, cursed her to turn anyone who met her gaze to stone.
She was said to have been slain by the hero Perseus, while her sisters lived on in the Underworld.
Danae kept her hands clamped over her face as the hissing circled her.
‘We will not hurt you, creature of flesh,’ said one of the gorgons, her voice a silken caress.
‘There are tales within tales, and very little is what came to pass,’ said her sister, her words creaking like timber.
Danae wriggled her toes. She had not been petrified yet. Perhaps, like so many of the stories she had been told, the power of the gorgons’ stone-sight was only myth.
She lowered her hands.
The gorgons had removed their hoods. Danae stared at their hair, marvelling at the tangle of scaled bodies sliding over their scalps.
The first woman’s snakes were green as the hills of Thessaly, her skin a deep hazel, her lips full and questioning.
Her sister’s serpents were ebony, her tusks stained with age, her skin creased and pale as the moon.
‘Were you made?’ asked the elder of the two.
Danae frowned. ‘What?’
‘Were you made or were you born?’ pressed the younger.
‘Born,’ she said hesitantly.
A breath fluttered from the elder’s lips, and she moved forward, clutching at Danae’s arms. Her hands were cold and rough.
‘We have been made before and we will be made again,’ she muttered, her snakes hissing like the tragic chorus in a play.
Danae cringed away from her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘More flesh,’ whispered the younger, stepping close on Danae’s other side. ‘He is never sated, always changing, always cutting.’
They grabbed hold of her arms. Their snakes became more frenzied, writhing and hissing, their tiny forked tongues licking the gloom.
‘Get off me.’ Danae struggled, but their grip tightened.
‘We miss our sister,’ cried the elder. ‘We miss her ever-so.’
Then light blazed across the plain.
The gorgons let go of Danae and shrank back, throwing up their hands to shield their eyes. Their snakes too cringed away, flattening themselves down their mistresses’ necks.
Danae turned to see Charon striding through the mist. He held his staff aloft, the crystal atop it a miniature sun, blazing away the creatures of darkness.
When she looked back, the sisters had disappeared, once more swallowed by the mist.
The ferryman’s vermillion eyes were bright with rage. He reached out a gloved hand and prodded her sternum. Then pointed to his own.
‘I understand,’ Danae said, still breathless. ‘I won’t wander off again.’
Charon nodded once, then led her back to their makeshift camp.
After a few more fitful hours of sleep, Danae woke again, this time to the drumming of hooves. The ground trembled as she pushed herself upright. Charon stood a few feet away, his staff clutched in his gloved hand as he gazed at the horizon.
A cloud of dust lingered between the misted earth and night-dark sky. Shapes moved within the haze. They appeared to be men on horseback, charging towards them like an invading army.
She was tempted to cry out and beg their aid. As though sensing her thoughts, Charon grabbed the back of her dress and yanked her into the shadow of the rock. She struggled against him, but he held her against the stone, clamping a gloved hand over her mouth.
The pounding of hooves grew loud as thunder as the horses neared them. Then, like a storm-whipped wave, the riders crashed past the rock.
Danae’s eyes widened despite the stinging dust as she saw that it was no army, but a herd of centaurs.
She had once seen their likeness on an amphora, the torso of a man mounted on the body of a stallion. The mighty creature had been in the throes of death, poisoned by an arrow shot by Heracles. Centaurs were said to dwell in the mountains of Thessaly and Arcadia and feast on raw flesh.
She stopped struggling as their powerful bodies raced past. Their long hair streamed behind them, blending with the fur that traced the length of their spines all the way to their gleaming tails.
They were all the colours of an autumn forest: auburn, mahogany, bright russet and darkest ebony.
Not one turned back to look at Danae or Charon; they cantered on, as though chased by an invisible swarm of gadflies.
Once the dust began to settle, the ferryman released his grip. She swiftly moved away from him, staring after the centaurs. When she looked back, Charon had already begun to trudge onwards.
Danae followed him. After what felt like several hours, her foot caught on something hidden in the mist, and she fell to the ground.
Roots had bubbled up to the surface, pulsing with the same ethereal light as the ones surrounding the bronze gates.
She clenched her jaw as she scrambled to her feet and was forced to hop over the glowing coils to keep up with Charon.
The air too had changed. It felt closer somehow, the moisture rattling in her lungs. Sure enough, when she looked up, she could make out the crags of the rock ceiling above and the crystals of the glowing stones set into its crevices to mimic the stars. The world was growing smaller.
She flinched as something drifted past her face.
A butterfly. For a moment she was held in memory as its large cherry-red wings transported her back to a similar insect on Lemnos.
But, like so many things she’d encountered in the Underworld, the butterfly was not as it seemed.
The creature before her may have the same vibrant wings, but its body was squat and hairy like a spider, its eight legs dangling like claws ready to curl around its prey.
She continued on and soon the roots became so thick, she and Charon were forced to clamber over them hand to foot.
A flock of birds flew overhead, their feathers shimmering like spilled oil, their necks longer than their bodies.
A little while later, Danae could have sworn she saw a crow with no head at all.
Flowers too began to appear between the roots.
She recognized none of them, their jagged petals splashed with echoes of colour as if an artist had spilled all their dyes at random.
A creature that resembled a bee, with the horns of a beetle, landed in the centre of one of these plants.
She watched it rub its engorged abdomen on the pale-yellow pistil until the petals suddenly snapped together.
A moment later, something dark trickled between them.
She wondered if she still slept on the misty plane, trapped in a fever dream.
She was drawn from staring at the carnivorous flower by the sound of running water.
She hurried after Charon and found the shade standing at the edge of a large lagoon, the glowing roots trailing into its depths.
It seemed they had finally reached the end of the vast cave that contained the Underworld kingdom of Erebus.
On the far side, a waterfall tumbled from the rock face, masking the current that flowed beneath it out through a cave.
On the surface of the dark water floated plants that were round and as milky pale as fallen moons.
Between them, tiny silver fish darted through the lagoon, glowing antennae protruding from their heads.
Danae’s gaze darted between their little shimmering bodies, then her eyes were drawn to movement by the waterfall.
Someone was swimming in the lagoon.
It was a girl. Her back was to Danae, so at first all she could see was the girl’s auburn curls trailing in the water.
Time seemed to catch in the ripples left in the swimmer’s wake as she reached the far bank and leant her white arms on the root-twined rock.
From what was visible of her torso, she seemed to be naked.
She was so very pale, but then most creatures in the Underworld seemed to be leached of colour.
The girl turned her head, the edge of her mouth and outline of her nose emerging from behind her swathe of wet hair. Strange as she was, there was something achingly familiar about her features.
Danae’s heart tightened, then soared through her chest. She could barely form words, her body calcifying with hope, as the girl extended a slender hand to twist a lazy finger around a protruding root at the edge of the lagoon.
Finally, with colossal effort, Danae regained control of her voice and rasped, ‘Alea?’