Chapter 15 The Third Day
The Third Day
If possible, work on the reservoir proceeded even worse than before.
While I supervised the diggers, Hades and his team brought over the pipes they’d fabricated.
Of course, the pipes were not uniform. And Mackr had apparently been so obnoxious on the pipe-team that Hades was reassigning him to me — “Thanks a lot,” I snarled at Hades, and Hades chirped, “You’re welcome!
” — and now, instead of working, Mackr had apparently decided to sit in front of the pipe-shaft and whinge at everybody.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t lose my temper at the workers, but I couldn’t help it.
Finally I stormed over to Mackr. I grabbed him by the furry scruff of his spider-neck.
I was so hungry and scared and pissed off that I didn’t even remember to recoil from his awful fangs.
“I have not seen my sick mother in three days,” I hissed into his unblinking, emotionless black spider-eyes.
“I have had it up to here with you motherfuckers. Get into that shaft and dig some fucking rock before I tear your head off and eat your fucking brains, you freak.”
“Monarch’s balls,” said Mackr. “Fine, fine fine. Let me go. You don’t have to be so sensitive.”
“You call this sensitive?” I screamed at him and thrust him into the shaft. “I’ll show you sensitive!” I whirled on everyone else. “What the fuck are you looking at? Get in there and dig!”
For almost the first time, a bunch of godlings scuttled into the shaft.
Toward the back of the reservoir, Hades leaned over and whispered something to Elke.
Elke was staring at me with a resentful frown.
Even Hades looked surprised. At their expressions, I felt embarrassed — but only for a second.
Then I was angry. I was still hungry! My mother was dying!
Calix hadn’t even tried to come get me! I needed this whole project to go faster! —
Behind me, in the pipe-shaft, an enormous crack sounded.
The earth juddered. I grabbed for the wall.
Hades slammed into me — my breath was snatched from my lungs; I couldn’t believe how fast he had moved, from all the way across the reservoir — just before a rockslide came crashing out of the pipe-shaft.
My heart plunged. The sheer volume of rock, piling into the reservoir, made it look like a whole building had collapsed.
Fortunately the rock wasn’t blocking the shaft mouth.
It had crashed too far down. And all of the workers, I thought, had been close enough to the mouth that they’d been able to scramble out of the way; yes, I counted them, they were clustered around the shaft mouth and the rock pile, dusting themselves off, clutching each other, panting, bug-eyed. Except…
“Mackr!” I screamed. “Where’s Mackr?”
Hades looked around. He blanched.
I dove upward into the pipe-shaft. Hades seized me around the waist and hauled me back, exactly the way Calix had hauled me away from the underworld border. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. “The rockslide! There might be another wave.”
“This is the Monarch’s doing,” someone wailed. “It is His will that we should perish of thirst!”
“We should sacrifice the human!”
“Not obey her! Sacrifice her!”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I howled at them.
“Let me go!” I whacked at Hades. He was undaunted.
I screamed, at everyone and no one, “This has nothing to do with the Monarch’s will,” meanwhile hitting Hades over and over, trying to get him to release me, because if Mackr was injured it was my fault, if he was dead or dying then it was my fault.
I shouted, “This is because you people don’t know how to dig through unstable soil!
You probably dug sideways into one of those fucking catacombs!
Gods, you live underground, how can you not get this one thing right —”
“Persephone,” Hades warned.
I scratched at his eyes.
Hades hissed and let me go, clapping his hands over his face. He grabbed for me a second later, but it was too late. I scrambled up into the pipe-shaft, moving too fast for Hades to catch me. He dove after me, cursing to kingdom come, as I skidded and slid over bits of loose rock.
But halfway up the shaft, there was still no sign of Mackr.
“Mackr!” I called. I flinched a second later, afraid the echo of my voice would cause another rockslide.
Then I heard a groan.
Beneath my feet.
I looked down. I was standing on a flat sheet of rock.
But as I shifted my weight, it wobbled slightly, like a see-saw.
I jumped off it, almost tumbling straight backward into Hades, who had just caught up with me.
“You unholy terror,” he breathed at me. It appeared I hadn’t scratched his eye after all, just his cheekbone.
He had an angry red mark there, but his blue eyes were clear — and mad as hell.
“What is your problem? I thought you wanted to get back to your mother, not get yourself killed.”
“I have to get Mackr,” I said. “I think he’s under this sheet of rock.” I tried to heave it up, but I was too weak.
The expression on Hades’s face shifted. He crouched. He called, “Mackr?”
That groan again. “Prince…”
Fortunately, Hades was stronger than I was. Impossibly strong. He wedged his hands under the rock and heaved it up. It lifted like it was a sheet of paper, crashed on its edge on the steeply sloping shaft floor —
And began to fall.
I recoiled.
Hades caught it. He held it up with his shoulder, like he was leaning into a door, but I could see the strain in his neck muscles.
“We have to keep it from falling again while we get Mackr out,” I said worriedly, my mind working. Then an idea flashed into my mind. “What about spiderwebs? Like the ones in the graveyard? Could one of the godlings spin a spiderweb to keep this rock sheet at bay?”
“Monarch, no, goddess. Don’t even suggest it. That’s not something we do in polite company. That’s like asking someone to solve a problem by menstruating on it —”
He broke off and gasped. Something had crashed into the sheet of rock from the other side.
Another rockslide.
My heart began to pound. “Hades —”
“Get Mackr,” Hades gritted out. He was not looking at me. He had thrown all his weight against the sheet of rock. His muscles were already shaking from the force of keeping it from crashing down on us. Splitting all our heads like so much fruit. “You’re right. You have to get Mackr out of here.”
“But you —”
“You have to. They’ll never forgive you if you don’t.”
If I let Mackr die, the godlings would blame me. And they would be right to.
And then they would refuse to work on the reservoir.
And then I would be eaten.
And then my mother would die.
Terrified, I looked down at Mackr for the first time since Hades had lifted the rock.
His human body was nearly flattened. Greenish blood leaked out. One of his pupilless spider-eyes had burst, smearing some kind of hideous fluid all over the hairs of his flat ugly head.
But he was still groaning. He had air in his lungs, if he had lungs.
There was no time to think, no time to handle him with mercy.
I hauled one of Mackr’s arms over my shoulders and wrapped my arm around his human waist. He screeched with pain, the sound like a balloon popping inside my ear.
I could feel his broken ribs grinding against my hand. “Move,” I said to him.
“C… can’t.”
“Move,” Hades barked behind us. The noise punched out of him with breath he couldn’t spare.
But it was still the order of a Prince.
I kicked Mackr in the back of his legs. Mackr, moaning, began to move.
Mackr and I slid down the shaft. I didn’t dare look back at Hades. I could hear the groaning of the rock like an earthquake. Could hear Hades’s grunts and pants as he kept the rockslide at bay.
I had to trust Hades. If not to save me, at least to save himself and Mackr, who was one of his beloved people.
“Don’t die on me, Mackr,” I panted, trying to distract myself. “If you die, you’ll never have the chance to stop being such a son of a bitch.”
“Fuck you,” he croaked.
“You wish. Almost there, Mackr. Almost there…”
I fell out the bottom of the shaft with him.
The open air was glorious. I rolled my ankle as I landed on the hard, stable earth. I hissed, but I didn’t drop Mackr.
Someone grabbed me. Other godlings swarmed, took Mackr from my arms. The one who had steadied me still had me balanced between her spider-arms. It was Elke. She gazed at me in wide-eyed terror. “The Prince…”
I didn’t even stop to answer. Not even to take one more clean breath. I pivoted on my bad ankle and climbed back into the darkness.
My ankle screamed. The rough rock bit into my palms. But I kept going. When I reached the top, Hades was still there, still holding back the avalanche.
I pressed myself against the rock next to him. Uselessly, of course.
He looked down at me. His eyes widened in panic. “You were supposed to get out!”
“I got Mackr out.”
“No. No. You were supposed to be saved. You’re the only one —”
“You said they wouldn’t forgive me if I got Mackr killed. And no one even likes him,” I bit out. “So how do you think they’d feel if I got their beloved Prince killed instead?”
“Better than I’d feel if you got killed,” Hades said darkly. I felt a brief flush of pleasure at being valued like that — but of course, he needed me for his reservoir. “Get out. Now.”
“No.” But the rock sheet was finally slipping.
The rockslide had built up too much behind it, like water in a pipe.
My feet slid. My heart hammered. I looked around frantically for something, anything, that we could use to stem the tide.
Another piece of rock. A shovel or something to use as a strut. Anything.
There was nothing.
My eyes fell on the divot that Mackr’s body had mashed into the earth when he fell. A couple of boulders filled it now. If I could clear the boulders out… the hole would be just big enough for two people.
Or one very small person, and one moderately large godling.