Chapter 20 Calix, Again
Calix, Again
He carried me, spluttering, to land. I clutched him, sobbing, still too close to death to even be humiliated.
“Persephone,” Calix said urgently. He gripped my face, my shoulders, my neck, as though I were made of gold. “Persephone, please, we’ve got to get out of here.”
I had no idea what was going on. There was some commotion, but I was too blinded by the water and my own subsiding panic to make it out. I wanted to rush out of the cavern as quickly as possible before someone forced me back in the Lake. But I couldn’t stop coughing. I doubled over, freaking out.
When I got my bearings enough to straighten up, I realized that Calix wasn’t the only human here.
There were a hundred others, almost all of them men.
They carried knives and bayonets. They were all bedecked in the close-fitting, vivid green uniform of Iernia’s War Police.
I had never even seen that uniform except in paintings.
And they were killing the chaosgotten.
Blood everywhere. Scarlet, onyx, emerald.
The chaosgotten were fighting back, but these chaosgotten — my workers — were civilians, not soldiers. Did the underworld even have a standing army?
Where was Hades?
As I searched the crowd wildly, I caught sight of the humanoid chaosgotter who’d tried to save me from the Lake. His face was twisted in terror. A soldier had caught him by the hair.
I watched as his throat was slit. His blood was green-black.
I screamed. I lunged to help but Calix caught me.
I was so fucking sick of men holding me back!
Calix wrestled me into the throne room. We were halfway across when I spotted the Vizeking, hustling the King into his secret back cave.
“Let the King go!” I screamed at the Vizeking.
I didn’t like the King, but he was big enough to crush these human soldiers like bugs.
Then I saw Hades.
He was running out of the Lake cavern, his eyes wild. He was carrying Elke. Her bug-body was so round that he had to wrap his arms all the way around her, like she was an enormous stuffed animal or a sack of potatoes.
Then he spotted me.
“GO!” he screamed. “GO!”
I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t know why he was telling me to leave right after he’d tried to sacrifice me to his wild god. He’d tried to drown me. He’d held me underwater.
He tucked Elke behind the stalagmite throne to protect her. He threw one final wild-eyed look at me. And then, when he was satisfied that Calix was dragging me out of the throne room to safety, he turned and charged for his father and the Vizeking.
He vanished into the back cavern.
And then Calix had me out of the throne room. He was urging me through the catacombs. “Where are we going?” I gasped.
“East.”
“East is that way.”
Calix slowed. He looked at me angrily. “No, it’s not. We entered from this direction.”
Two seconds into my rescue and he was already telling me I was wrong? “The catacombs move. The tunnels, I mean. I’m telling you, east is that way.”
He chewed the inside of his cheek. “Okay. Take us east.”
I led him as eastward as I could, feeling out the shifts in the earth.
Calix followed behind me, jumpy and unhappy.
I was on high alert, shaking all over, moving forward on blind autopilot, my lungs still jerking.
I kept swiveling, trying to see in all directions at once, prepared for someone to try to get me back into the Lake — or perhaps for the opposite, for someone to recognize me and help us. I didn’t know.
I didn’t know anything anymore.
I couldn’t believe that Hades and Calix had both meant the things they’d said to me. Calix that he would rescue me. Hades that he would murder me.
But I knew at once when we’d reached the place Calix was looking for.
An enormous shaft had been drilled through the ceiling.
The shaft wasn’t like the Gestorbunlund’s catacombs at all; it was more like the pipe-shaft I’d had the chaosgotten dig.
The earth beneath it was dusted with rubble.
The sun beamed down like the moonlight over the Lake’s reverse waterfall.
A rope-and-pulley system, lined with harnesses, dangled from the shaft.
Calix began to strap me into one of the harnesses. I could have done it myself, but I let him. It was easier. “Did you… dig this?” The shaft was huge. We were relatively close to the surface here, but still, it had to go up a hundred feet.
“Sure did.”
“And brought all those War Police down?”
“Yep.”
“Why?”
He paused mid-cinch. “To save you,” he said, as though it should be obvious. “Don’t you remember? I told you I would.”
Despite myself, something in my stomach melted. For years I’d wanted Calix to say something like that to me.
But the rational part of my mind — the engineer’s mind — couldn’t shake the sense that something was wrong with his story.
“Yeah, but why would the War Police care that I’d been kidnapped? Your soldiers came all the way from Corcagia. They must have been ordered by the Body.”
“I petitioned.”
“Calix.” I tried to rotate in the harness to look at him. He was already hoisting me up with the rope-and-pulley. “Calix, stop, I’m trying to talk to you.”
“There’s no time.”
“I’ve been here for three days, I can take two minutes to have a conversation.
Calix, the Body doesn’t answer petitions that quickly.
Commissioning the War Police like that should take years.
And besides, the chaosgotten kidnap a woman every quarter-century, and the Body’s never done anything about it. Why do they care now?”
“Because of me. I have influence through the diplomat’s college.”
“You’re a first-year student!” But I was already halfway up the shaft. Either he couldn’t hear me anymore, or he was pretending not to.
At the top, I unhooked myself from the harness and fell onto the grass. I felt like I should kiss the grass or something. But honestly it seemed a lot less special, since Hades had just brought me here a few hours prior.
But my body was calming down. Up here, there seemed no chance that anyone could get me back in the Lake.
I looked around. The rope-and-pulley system was connected to a winch. On the ground next to the winch was an enormous rotary drill. Calix and his War Police must have used that to tunnel into the underworld. Sure enough, when I inspected the shaft wall, I saw grooves from the drill bit.
With a drill as big as this, they had probably managed to dig the shaft in under an hour. They had probably not even started until almost the moment that the King had boiled into the reservoir. They had come just in time.
The rope trembled as Calix hauled himself up in his own harness. When he landed and unhooked himself, something tumbled out of his pocket. He collected it hastily, but I had already identified it.
It was an enormous sapphire. From the cave walls.
All at once I felt very tired. So much for Calix’s insistence that he’d done all this to save me.
I looked at him.
He shifted, embarrassed. “Don’t look at me like that. The Body wants gemstones as payment for letting me commission the War Police.”
So that was how Calix had gotten the Body involved. Still. “Don’t pretend you’re not keeping any of them for yourself.”
“I’m not. I only came here for you.”
I waited for my heart to skip a beat.
I didn’t feel anything.
Valiantly, I tried to have any emotions about it at all. Nothing happened. Maybe I was just too shell-shocked. I asked, “You really did all this for me?”
Calix smiled. His gorgeous eyes, his perfect white teeth. Although his eyes were really not as blue as Hades’s.
I looked around. Saw the spot, far away, where Hades said he’d left my basket. “Oh. What about the edenica herbs? Did you get them to my mother?”
His smile dimmed. “I’m sorry?”
“My basket full of herbs. Hades said he’d left them there for you.”
“Hades? Is that the name of the monster who took you? Did he make you wear that dress?”
The violet ballgown. I flushed. “He didn’t make me do anything. I needed something to wear. He lent it to me.”
“How generous. To kidnap an innocent woman and then lend her something to wear.”
It wasn’t like that, I wanted to say, but it had been exactly like that, actually.
I smoothed the dress over my thighs. Its brilliant sheen had faded; it was stiff and wrinkled from my ride through the reservoir shaft and stained all over with mud.
I remembered, with a quiet stab of shame, how much I’d liked it when I’d first put it on in Hades’s bedroom. Now I just felt stupid in it.
“Tell me about the monsters,” Calix said suddenly. “What’s it like down there? How does their society work? What did they do to you?”
I blinked, trying to catch up. “Uh. I mean, they kidnapped me. They threatened to kill me. They locked me up.” I could tell, though, that this wasn’t what Calix was looking for. He wanted detail. I wracked my brain, but… “Honestly, no one did anything much to me. Look at me. I’m fine.”
“They tried to drown you.”
“Except for that.”
“Persephone, this is important. Think.”
“Someone was an asshole,” I offered, thinking of Mackr. “But he got, um, nicer. Right before he died.”
Calix gave me a look that made it evident that this was unhelpful.
“I don’t know,” I protested. “Honestly, they were mostly… pretty nice.” Elke, with armfuls of clothes, her constant gentle kindness.
The chaosgotten, obeying my orders and protesting their King on my behalf.
Hades, fetching me water. I tried not to remember that part, tried to remember his hand on my throat instead, but his voice saying Trust me kept surging to the front of my mind.
“The Prince killed a rabbit so I wouldn’t have to eat the underworld food. ”
“He what?”
“What? You asked.”
Calix frowned hard. It was clear he didn’t believe me. After all, there would be no reason, none at all, for an underworld prince to feed his captive human food. “Maybe you’ll think of more to say when you’re not so traumatized.”
I didn’t feel traumatized. Not by anything besides the sight of all the blood on the War Police’s bayonets. Chaosgotten blood.
Calix was right, though. I should feel traumatized by the kidnapping and the near-drowning. “Maybe,” I said doubtfully.
It was only when we approached the village, and my hut, that I started to feel sick to my stomach.
I had been gone three days. How could I have allowed myself to stay away so long?
The Gestorbunlund, which had felt so real to me as Calix and I crossed the grass and the barren landscape, was beginning to feel distant and hazy.
It was as though it were a dream-world where I, asleep, had told myself that by staying away from my mother, I was saving her.
But who had I thought I was kidding? How could I have lied to myself so thoroughly?
How could I have ever believed that staying away from my mother was what was good for her?
But now I was back.
Calix and I stood in front of my hut’s little wooden door. The door was askew on its hinges. It had always been, because I had never found time to fix it.
I swallowed. I started for the door.
Calix caught hold of my hand.
“Wait,” he said. His voice came out too fast. “Wait, Persephone, I haven’t —”
The door opened.
Josie emerged. Her beautiful freckled face was puffy and red with tears. A gust of air from the house behind her hit my face.
The gust smelled like formaldehyde.
My stomach, which had been churning with nausea and anxiety and guilt, turned into a brick of ice.
Josie looked between me and Calix for a moment, uncomprehending. I was so frozen, I couldn’t even push past her to see what I knew I was going to see.
Then recognition dawned on Josie’s face. “P-Persephone?”
“What happened?” I heard myself say.
Josie could only huff in surprise. “You’re alive? Oh, gods, Calix.”
“Got her,” Calix said. There was no satisfaction in his voice. He only sounded tired, and worried. “Told you I would.”
“Persephone,” Josie said again. And then she fell on me, crying, clutching my arms and my filthy sweat-stiff hair. “I’m sorry,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry, I really did my best. I can’t believe you’re okay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Calix, tell her I’m sorry.”
A few days ago, I would have been filled with jubilation at Josie prostrating herself before me like this. Now I couldn’t feel anything at all.
“Is she dead?” I asked. I didn’t know why I bothered to ask. Of course she was dead.
Beside me, Calix buried his face in his hands. “That was why I didn’t give her the basket,” he said, muffled. “It was already too late.”
Josie was shaking against me. Her sturdy dress was nothing compared to my violet ballgown.
I would have traded the ballgown in a heartbeat if it meant I could have my mother back.
“It should have been me,” Josie wailed. “They should have taken me, not you. You could have saved her if you’d been here.
You always knew how to take care of her.
I tried, but I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t… ”
“They were never going to take you,” I said to Josie. “They didn’t want you.” I untangled myself from her arms. She had gone limp and stunned.
“Persephone,” said Calix reproachfully.
I ignored him. I set Josie aside and entered the house.
The smell of formaldehyde punched me in the face. Outside, the world was red from the setting sun, but in here it was dark. I had never been able to afford curtains, but Josie had hung thick ones. Out of respect, and to protect the body from rotting in the sun.
Why was I thinking of my mother as the body?
There she was. Arranged like a board on the single cot. Josie had already cut her open, begun to extract the organs and preserve the corpse. It was amazing, that this face that still bore my mother’s features did not have my mother in it anymore. Where was my mother? Where could she have gone?
The body’s flesh was as gray as the shadows of the underworld. Grayer, because it wasn’t lit by bioluminescence or the glitter of jewels.
The eyes were open. Staring like the eyeballs of a fish.
Almost fascinated, I put my hand into my mother’s stomach cavity. I had spent the last few years — in a way, my whole life — trying to get as close to her as possible, and this, my hand in her dead body, was as close as anyone could ever be.
“Persephone,” Josie whispered from the doorway.
I startled. I withdrew my hand. When I looked around, I realized that something else was wrong with the room. Something was missing. Not just my mother’s heartbeat. Something else.
It was my bedroll.
It had used to be unrolled in front of the fireplace. Now it was gone. Someone had put it away.
They had not thought that I would be coming back.