CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ I say, clutching his shoulder and pulling him from the throngs of people. He is his own tragedy – I know that. But it feels like Glaucus before me. And that instinctive need to protect my siblings surges.
He is a child and he has been here, fading and alone – which means Daedalus didn’t follow him to the Underworld. He must have survived.
‘Ariadne,’ Opora says softly. The reluctance is clear – as is the resignation. She knows exactly what I am about to suggest and knows she cannot fight it.
‘Will you take him?’
She nods, biting at her lip. ‘I can’t believe after all this we’re not even making it across together.’
‘I know,’ I say thickly. There are no burial rites for a child swallowed by the ocean. No coin to pay the ferryman. And another will not land in my palm.
‘I’ll give him mine,’ Opora says. ‘You can take him and –’
‘No, no, look at you both – you’re barely here. You need to get to the other side.’
‘What about you?’
‘I have more time,’ I say, raising my arm against hers. ‘Maybe there’s another way. Or I might be able to negotiate for someone’s spare coin – I’m the wife of Dionysus, that must hold some sway with someone here.’
She clearly doesn’t believe me but she’s aware of how few our options are too.
‘Icarus.’ I turn back to him. He is so faded his blinks are slow, his gaze unfocused – and it is a miracle he saw and recognized me at all. ‘This is my friend Opora. Do you know how the boat works?’
He nods, and though it takes him a moment, he adds: ‘It takes you on. To paradise – right? Where my mother is?’
‘Yes. Take this coin, and hold it very close until the ferryman asks for it. Opora will go with you.’
‘You’re not coming?’
I force a smile. ‘I’ll catch you up.’
Opora holds her hand out and Icarus, with only a moment’s hesitation, takes it.
I walk them to the riverbank, like I might be some form of protection.
At the edge, she pauses. ‘I’m so glad we at least get to say goodbye this time.’
I feel that lurch again – the way agony, when you are only a soul, encases every part of you.
We have spent so much of this clinging to each other, like it might make it all less painful. And now she loops her arms around me once more and she holds me until the boat moors itself on the shore.
I hold her hand to steady her as she climbs on to the boat and get down on one knee to give Icarus a step up.
Charon glowers at me from beneath the hood of his cloak like I might dare try to smuggle myself aboard without paying the proper fee.
But I don’t. I step back, making room for the others who have the appropriate fares, and then I watch as the boat pushes away and, finally, vanishes over the horizon.
‘Very few people would have made that choice,’ a voice says. I turn to the soul but it’s difficult to make her out. It takes me a moment, and then I can see the edges of layered skirts and the haze of curls – and I realize it is the woman from the banks, the one who led everyone in a dance.
‘When souls give up, when the despair becomes too much, they walk into the river and become just another wail in its currents,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I’m not giving up,’ I say – but my voice is quiet because how long until that ceases being true? I have all eternity upon this shore. I might have the strength to wait for years, or decades, or even millennia, but the Underworld has a patience that will always master mine.
‘Join us,’ she offers. ‘You can build something here. They would have you believe happiness is only possible beyond these shores but they’re wrong. There are people here, joy to be had here. You need only create it.’
‘It’s not the same, though,’ I say. My voice is strained, rough – and gods, this is it. I’m dead and this is the end – no path forward, no path at all. Just these banks until I forget the world above and all that came before.
She places her hand on my shoulder, and I can barely feel a thing. Is it her translucence or mine?
‘It’s not,’ she agrees. ‘But it’s something. It’s a choice where they would leave us with none.’
To be happy in spite of it all?
Yes, ordinarily yes, but … but I’m not done yet. I refuse. I cannot be stuck on a shoreline once more, ready to scrounge for a new sort of survival.
‘We can’t accept this,’ I say. ‘It’s not fair that so many souls are stuck here. Why? Because someone up above didn’t bury us properly?’
She arches a brow. ‘Some of us didn’t leave a body behind to bury.’
‘What’s your name?’ I ask.
She smiles, but it’s sad. I can feel the sadness, like it bleeds into the air. ‘I don’t remember that. But you never seem to forget the moment of the end. The pain. The regret.’
No. I cannot let my memories slip away, one after the next until I forget who I am. I’ve fought too hard, suffered too much – and I cannot be a story so forgotten I cannot even retain it myself.
And I cannot become only that moment – Dionysus’s eyes on mine as he begged me not to go.
‘I’m going to find a way out,’ I say. I’ll make one if I have to. I’ll forge the path ahead whether it wants to unfurl for me or not. ‘For all of us.’
Enough. Enough feeling crushed and trapped at every turn. How often have I longed to bring the walls down entirely? To chip away until the whole spiral collapses?
I refuse to stop, even down here.
The woman laughs. ‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t say no.’
‘Good. I feared you might call it futile.’
Something flickers through her hazy form, some brief glimpse of who she once might have been.
‘A shadow of a life is better than none at all. But we’d all take that full vibrancy if we could – so if there’s a chance …
Nothing sustains you like hope down here.
It feels like the first thing the bastards want to snatch from us poor forgotten souls on the banks of the Acheron.
So I never gave mine up. I hope you do find an escape – a story like that?
Of a girl making her way out? That could give a few more of us something to cling to. ’
Oh Fates, that’s a lot – but yes, yes! I’m doing this!
‘I’m Ariadne,’ I say – because I can. Because right now I remember it still.
‘Ariadne,’ she repeats. ‘I’ll try to remember it in case you can’t. Good luck.’
‘Thank you,’ I say – and then I turn and start walking.
There is no itch in my gut telling me which way to go, no answer it can lead me to.
But I walk anyway.
Out along the marshy banks, until the mud crumbles and grass begins spilling in earnest, and not the dry brittle type I had imagined of the Underworld but lush, verdant and green.
Flowers spring up along the riverbank, small freckled specks that grow in frequency, and I’m surprised to see how well they flourish, here where nothing is supposed to live.
But of course – Persephone is its queen. The goddess of flowers and spring, spending her winters in the Underworld.
I still.
Theseus came to kidnap Persephone. He can’t have succeeded, not for the Underworld to still be in bloom like this. So maybe they caught him.
Maybe he’s still here.
I could finally stop him – bind him.
A lurch in my gut, a need to veer left. A direction.
Oh … oh, it’s tempting.
I’m supposed to be looking for a way out …
But …
I could prevent him ever returning to hurt the girls who remain.
Oh fine, very well.
If I can achieve nothing else, I will take the vengeance I am owed.
I will be the final line in his story if the Fates would rob me of my own.