CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
IFOLLOW THE ACHERON UNTIL it meets a branch of the river Styx, which I recognize only by its dark churning waters, peculiarly framed by luminous pink flowers that line it on both sides.
If I touched the Acheron, I’d become just another scream haunting its waters.
If I waded into the Cocytus, I’d be submerged into its currents.
But if I touched the Styx? It nearly burned the mortality from Achilles in its entirety and that’s the only thing I have left.
Would I burn down here as piecemeal as I did looking into Dionysus’s immortal eyes?
Perhaps there’s a less harmful river to wade across?
But I run through what I know of the Underworld and that leaves only the river of fire and the river of forgetting.
I don’t want to forget – that is the very fear I am running from.
So when those instincts draw me to churning waters the red-brown colour of hardened blood, I hesitate for only a moment.
I could turn back. Join that woman. Find some sort of existence along the riverbank, drawing out my days to a long lingering stretch until I fade past the point of recognition, all I was scattered like the spraying drops of the river itself.
Or I could walk on, find the gentle white waters of the Lethe and forget everything quickly. I could stop fighting so very hard all the time and be at peace.
Or I can do the ludicrous, the outrageous, the incomprehensible.
It is not that the only path is the Acheron and the ferryman drawing his boat across the water. It is that it is the only reasonable one to take.
I dive into the fire.
The pain blisters along my not-quite-skin.
Relentless and debilitating, torture unlike any I have ever encountered, and I curse myself for being an impulsive, reckless, desperate idiot as I pull myself across.
I thought perhaps it might be easier, after the agony of burning alive in Dionysus’s arms as he begged me not to, to stay, to rewrite reality like it was within my grasp.
But pain has no memory and it hurts all the same.
I could barely speak then, and now my kicks are feeble, my reaching arms trembling.
And it is not the thought of Theseus’s demise spurring me on.
It is Dionysus, grasping my waist as he drew us into the ocean. It is his hand in mine as we wandered the labyrinth, that quiet voice in my mind pushing me on to the centre even now, even through all this hurt.
It is knowing that, if he could, he would have taken these waters for me. Would have drained them wholly if it saved me from a single drop.
Whatever you do, we’re not leaving your side.
From the very beginning, he swore I would never be alone. Even in this agony, as the flames lick the flesh from my intangible bones, I feel him by my side, his voice in my head, that even with all these miles separating us and the realms in our way, there is a part of him they cannot rip from me.
I burst free of the waters and fall, vision darkening at the edges, to the muddy earth below.
On. That feeling in my gut prompts. You’re close now.
But the pain doesn’t fade as the waters evaporate.
I look down, finding no damage – the flames cannot destroy a soul, I suppose, just the body encasing it and I no longer have one of those.
But my mind is razed by the perseverance.
The torment. How when Hermes snatched up my spirit, I just wanted it all to stop.
So I close my eyes, grit my teeth and push on.
Soon the Lethe appears, milky-white waters running parallel to the flames of the Phlegethon. Soft sand runs the length of the bank. Crisp, pearlescent shells speck its edge. It looks so calm, so inviting, and, after the burn of fire against my skin, so temptingly soothing.
Would it truly be so bad to slip into its waters?
In the distance, screams rise. It is so horrifically reminiscent of hearing the thiasus cry out for help that it jolts me from the trance I hadn’t realized I’d slipped into.
Of course. If Theseus had been apprehended, then he would be in the fields of punishment.
You’re close, so close.
The fires of the Phlegethon widen, and the Lethe pales to a trickle beside it.
Ahead, I see the great yawning chasm of the pit of Tartarus, where all the worst souls of the Underworld are sent.
There should be guards, surely, or monsters prowling the edges. Short of the occasional far-off shriek or flapping up above, I have not encountered anything in this realm that has truly struck me with terror.
But the shout that echoes ahead chills me.
‘We’re over here! Help!’
Will there ever be a point where I don’t fear that voice? The repercussions it might bring, the power it wields over me? A point where I am so healed I can face him without the certainty that, if he chose, he could hurt me all over again.
With Dionysus beside me, that was easier to believe.
My teeth grind against one another. How – how does he get to do this? Keep his knife in me when I have worked so hard to cast it out. Twist it as he pleases.
I had everything and it still hurt. I gave it all up – sacrificed it to save the person I most care for and it still hurt. I am dead and it still fucking hurts.
There. There’s the rage. If he is to hurt me, I will hurt him tenfold.
I follow the voice and there he is – the man who started all of this. And finally, finally I can end it.