Chapter 3 The Border
The Border
We walked together to the underworld border.
Our village was the westernmost human settlement on the island of Iernia.
If you walked west from Limer — as I did, regularly, against the advice of everybody alive — then you would reach the underworld border, followed by the lush land that carpeted the underworld.
But from there, if you kept going — if you walked all the way across the underworld’s territory, that twisted, unknowable underground land, through which dark creatures skittered, emerging only every quarter-century to steal a woman to eat alive — then you would reach the very edge of the island.
The land ended at a vertical cliff. The cliff plunged a thousand feet ninety degrees down, straight into the Tourmaline Sea — except for one impossibly narrow overhang, which stretched over the water like a mile-long finger.
The tip of the overhang touched an enormous mountain that erupted from the middle of the ocean.
We called that mountain the Primordial Mountain. When the sun set, it cast a shadow that extended over the entire underworld. The top of the mountain was always wreathed in tornadoes and black clouds. Nobody knew what was up there.
To my knowledge, no one had ever approached the Primordial Mountain, let alone tried to scale it. You’d have to cross over top of the underworld to do that.
But clear white rivers gushed from the mountain’s peak.
From this distance, those rivers looked like white ribbons, undulating into the scarlet sea.
I had studied as much as I could about mountain rivers, and I thought this one was runoff from melting ice caps, although any ice was invisible behind the clouds.
If I was right, that meant the water was drinkable.
I licked my lips.
When we reached the border, we stood on the human side. Calix regarded the rivers and the mountain and the sea. The grass over the underworld drifted in the breeze like fur.
I thought Calix was watching the fresh water from the mountain dump wastefully into the ocean, which was what I was doing. But then he asked, frowning, “Is it bigger?”
“Is what bigger?”
“This grassy area. The territory above the underworld. I feel like the mountain used to be… closer. Did the underworld get bigger?”
Some uncertainty flickered in my mind. Surely not. Except…
I remembered my boots, on the wrong side of the border.
I had thought someone had moved my boots. But when I’d turned around, no one had been there. I had been alone.
What if the border itself had moved?
No. That was insane. I said to Calix, “How would you know? You never came here before.”
“Hmph.” Calix’s eyes kept roving over the sea. “That red color isn’t natural, you know. Natural oceans are blue.”
“See, that’s the kind of shit you never said before you went to college.”
“Well, it’s true. Gods, I hate it here. Why did you bring me here, Persephone?”
I swallowed. Now that it was really happening, now that I was telling him my idea, I found myself so anxious my stomach churned. My hands shook a little as I spread my notebook pages on the rocky ground. “Okay. Here’s the long and the short of it: Limer needs a reservoir.”
Calix’s eyes roved over my papers. I watched, my heart in my throat, as he squinted at my schematics.
Surely I’d measured enough times. Surely I had this right.
“Is this a drawing of a reservoir?” he asked.
“It’s good. But it’s too small. The reservoir that serves Corcagia is two hundred times this size. ”
“It doesn’t matter. The principles are the same, no matter the size.
All we need, basically, is a storage system — we can even just call it a giant box — that we can situate right here.
” I pointed to my meticulous, hand-drawn map.
“In ideal circumstances, we’d build the reservoir up high, on stilts or something, so we could collect rain and then force water through pipes with gravity.
But there’s no rain right now. So instead, look, I drafted a plan to build a freestanding reservoir on the ground and then elevate it at a later point, if the drought ever ends.
” When, not if, I told myself fiercely. “The reservoir will be located near the fields and the village. People can carry water in buckets to the crops or to their homes. Later, we’ll build pipes that open and close with valves.
We’ll install outlets strategically to bring water straight to houses and to irrigate crops. It’ll fix everything.”
I waited.
Calix did not leap up and sweep me into a hug at my brilliance.
Instead, he rocked back on his heels. “I get the idea, but the Body would never authorize the purchase of the materials and labor it would take to build something like this all the way out here. I’m sorry, Persephone. Limer is just too small.”
“I don’t need the Body to authorize it. We can build it ourselves. Right now I just need the box, and one big pipe to get water to the box.”
“But there is no water.”
I took a deep breath. This was the part Calix wasn’t going to like. My stomach clenched. It was now or never. “That’s what I need you for. You’re a diplomat. Or a diplomat-in-training, anyway.”
Calix blinked at me. He wasn’t getting it.
“Everyone likes you. You’re smart, you’re charming. And I assume you have, I don’t know, methods you’ve learned in school, for getting people to do what you want. Negotiation tactics.” Along with the methods he already had, like making my stomach flip-flop every time he smiled.
He smiled now, obviously pleased. “I mean, maybe a couple.”
“Great. That’s why I’m asking you to go to the underworld and negotiate with the godlings for access.” I pointed to the gushing water from the Primordial Mountain. “To that.”
The blood drained from Calix’s face.
Oh no. This already wasn’t going well. “Calix,” I said, anxiously.
Too late. “You want me to talk to them? Like they’re human?”
“Don’t act so shocked. We know they have language. There are firsthand reports. Calix —”
“Firsthand reports? You mean from the one girl who ever escaped their clutches —”
“Calix.”
“Two hundred years ago,” Calix went on, almost frothing. “That’s the last time and the only time anyone’s ever escaped the underworld. Two hundred years ago, one girl came running home to Limer, weeks after her abduction, barefoot and scratched all over.”
“I know, but still —”
“And less than twelve hours later, her family had to strap her to her bed to stop her running back to the underworld, because it was dragging her there like a magnet. They had to nail the bed to the floor, because she was so desperate to go back she hauled the whole bedframe along, scraping it across the floor. And it was no use. She went anyway, Persephone. She ate through the straps.”
My stomach roiled. “I know. But while she was here, she provided firsthand accounts of the underworld.”
Calix scoffed and paced.
But he didn’t contradict me. I was right. She’d spoken of walls studded to the gills with precious jewels. Crazed labyrinths of twisting tunnels. A great, cold cavern where women had been hanged.
The godlings’ plated flesh, their innumerable eyes.
And — yes — their shockingly human-sounding speech.
“I’m not saying they’re not dangerous,” I insisted to Calix. “I’m just saying, they’re sentient, and they can talk. So talk to them.” I didn’t dare add, For me.
“If they’re sentient, that only makes them worse! If they were wild animals, they could maybe be forgiven for what they’ve done. But they aren’t, and they can’t.”
“I don’t need to forgive them. I just need access to the water.”
Calix ran his hands through his hair. “I know. But this is crazy. Look, I’ll tell you what.
I’ll talk to the representatives in Corcagia.
I’ll place an inquiry with the Body to establish a partnership with an entity on the mainland.
They can ship water to Corcagia, and we’ll transport it here by truck. ”
I exploded. “Are you kidding me? That’s your grand plan?
Anything that has to be reviewed by the Body takes six months at least. And that’s not even counting the time it’ll to find an enterprise on the mainland, and their review process, and then building the infrastructure, and the packaging time and the shipping time.
But this, this construction, I can do by myself. ”
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes I can! I can get Isaac and Jameson” — two local merchants, as thirsty as the rest of us — “to front the materials for the reservoir and the artery pipe. I can round up enough volunteers to build a basic version of this in a week. But I can’t get access to the water without you.
You know I can’t go into the underworld, not now. ”
“No one should go in there ever,” he said darkly. “I’m sorry, Persephone, I won’t.”
The fucking bastard. And after he’d seen my mother. “So you’ll just run back to Corcagia, is that it? This isn’t your problem?”
“I didn’t say that. I told you, we’re trying to help —”
“Forget it. Just wait here while I gather some fucking herbs.”
Calix’s eyes widened. “You’re not crossing over again?”
“Move.”
His hand shot out. He wrapped his arm around my stomach, caging me in. “No. I can’t let you.”
Heat bubbled in my stomach against his hand. I ignored it. “Let me go or I’ll kill you.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
Before I even knew what I was doing, I had whipped around in the cage of Calix’s arms and screamed, “MY MOTHER IS DYING!”
Calix froze.
“She is dying,” I hissed again through my teeth.
His face was so close, I could have kissed him.
Heat throbbed in my stomach despite myself, from anger or want or sheer suffering, I couldn’t tell.
“She moans through the night, Calix, she’s in so much pain.
She’s going to die without fresh water. And that’s fine, according to you. ”
“I didn’t say —”