CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Journey Through the Fury"
Tao kept her head bowed as the waters of the Styx carried her through. She felt the transition as a full-body sensation, not painful, but enormous.
And then she was standing on a pavement, the air had weight and smell again, and somewhere nearby two people were arguing about a parking space passionately, as if parking space is the most important thing in the world.
Tao stood in the middle of all of it and breathed and felt the strange. She longer belonged here.
"How did you survive with this noise?" Sidius asked from beside her.
"Sidius," Tao said, pulling him into a brief hug that he accepted stiffly.
"I am your Charon," he said, when she released him. "I told you. Where you go, I go."
"Did you tell Hades?" she asked.
"I told him what he needed to know," Sidius replied.
She smiled and looked around at the world she had left. It was the same. Loud and imperfect and moving at the speed of people who still believed they had unlimited time. She had once been one of those people.
"Let me show you around," Tao said. "I'll be your Charon for once."
She took him to the café first, one she had spent more hours of her university life in than anywhere else.
It was strange to walk in unnoticed, not a single head turning, not a single camera adjusting.
She had lived her entire adult life inside the radius of attention and had believed she found it exhausting.
She understood now that it had also been a form of companionship.
Absence had a specific texture she hadn't predicted.
"I don't think I have ever walked in here without someone shouting my name," she said.
"Do you miss it?" Sidius asked.
"Parts of it," she said honestly. "The wrong parts, probably."
She walked him past the university, past the statue in the east courtyard. She stood before it for a while and felt the strange recursion of looking at a likeness of yourself from the outside. It was a good tribute piece. The sculptor had framed her perfectly.
She took him to the Montgomery Mansion and stood on the pavement across the street, looking at the lit windows and the familiar shadows moving behind the curtains, and she did not go in.
"You don't have to," Sidius said.
"I know," she said. "They have each other. That's enough. That has to be enough."
She watched her mother's silhouette in the upstairs window for a moment longer. Then she turned away.
The sky was filled with stars, a sight Tao had forgotten. “Stargazing was one of Taron and I’s favorite activities when we were little,” she muttered in a sad voice.
For Tao, the journey had felt like she was thrust into a tunnel of emotions. Death wasn’t the hardest part, walking through the familiar paths of your life and finally saying goodbye were.
Sidius stood quietly beside her, watching as her face lit up in a tiny smile. Sidius had been on this journey for multiple millenia but each time always left him feeling hopeless at their pain.
"One more stop," Tao said catching his attention again.
?
Priya's house was too dark and too quiet.
Tao felt it before she saw it. The front door was ajar.
The hallway light was on. She moved through the door ahead of Sidius and found Priya on the floor of her own entrance hall, surrounded by the dark spread of blood, her phone shattered beside her, her body at an angle that no conscious person would have chosen.
"Sidius," Tao said.
"I see it," he said behind her.
"Do something. Please." Her voice came out broken. She knelt beside Priya. She could not touch her, could not do anything physical in this form, but she stayed close. "Please, Sidius."
"We cannot interfere with the fates of the living," Sidius said, his voice very gentle. "But listen."
She listened. Sirens, distant and slowly closing in.
Someone had already called. Help was on its way.
Tao stayed beside Priya and talked to her in a low, steady voice, telling her everything she had forgotten to say while she was alive: how she appreciated her, how she took her for granted and how she’d do anything to relive the many good times they’d had.
She talked until the first set of headlights swept through the window and the door came fully open, the paramedics flooded in quickly.
In the rush of movement a folded flier slipped from Priya's jacket pocket and landed face up on the floor.
Milan Fashion Week. Roman Cavalier. Monica Blanchard closing the show.
Tao looked at it for a long time. Then she looked at Sidius.
"I hope you like fashion," she said.