Chapter 23 I’ll See You at Home
I’ll See You at Home
Iremembered lying on the grass with Hades. His mouth fully on mine, his tongue on my teeth, his hands fisted in this very dress as I demanded: Do you know what we humans would give to be immortal? I could have my father back. Everyone could have everyone back.
Hades had replied, You don’t understand.
But he was the one who didn’t understand.
My heart began to beat faster. I blinked. All at once the world seemed brighter, more colorful. Josie was looking at me strangely.
My mother’s casket, now steady on the shoulders of the men, began to move toward the cemetery.
Calix had accompanied me to the funeral.
He should have been by my side, symbolically holding my arm to demonstrate that I, as the only remaining member of my family, was supported in my grief.
But he was too busy supervising the men carrying my mother’s casket.
So the casket headed the processional line, followed by Calix, followed by me, followed by the other attendants: the farmhands, my mother’s friends, my father’s friends, the merchants, the village girls, the tourists, Josie and the Stammerers.
All wearing black except for me. My mother’s coffin a pale wood.
I should have been next in line behind the coffin. Closest to it. I would have been angry at Calix for taking that spot, if I had not already decided that it did not matter, because I was going to bring my mother back.
The gravedigger, a middle-aged, black-haired man with sand in the wrinkles of his face, had already dug my mother’s grave next to my father’s.
The earth was dry and hard. It must have taken him all night.
He had also set up a gravestone, which I had not ordered.
I supposed Josie must have ordered it, and also paid for it.
Probably she’d done it before I had even returned from the underworld, which was why I had not been asked.
The gravedigger said the funeral rites since we didn’t have a priest. I heard one of the tourists snickering.
The War Police lowered my mother into the pit.
Everyone stared as I watched her go down.
My eyes were dry. I could tell that they had expected me to burst into tears or wail or drag myself back to the underworld.
I had disappointed them. Too fucking bad.
At least they could satisfy themselves with the knowledge that I had worn a scandalous outfit.
And with that, the funeral was over.
The gravedigger began to shovel the dirt back into the hole. No matter. I waited. When everyone was gone, I’d dig her up again.
A few people drifted off. Then a few more.
The farmhands stayed though, and the merchants, and even a couple of the village girls.
People who truly wanted to pay their respects to my mother.
They wanted to talk to me, too. They tried to tell me they were sorry.
But I didn’t want their apologies. What was I supposed to do with apologies?
Make these people feel better? No fucking way.
Josie was one of the last to go. She squeezed my shoulder. “I’ll see you at home,” she whispered.
Home? Did she mean her house? I could have laughed.
Eventually the only people left were me, Calix, Calix’s War Police pallbearers, and the gravedigger.
The War Police had drifted off to the side of the graveyard, where they jostled each other impatiently.
Calix, standing next to me while we watched the gravedigger shovel soil, kept glancing back at them.
He was practically on his tip-toes, he was so desperate to get to them.
The sixth time he looked over his shoulder, I remarked without looking at him, “Your boys are waiting for you.”
Calix jumped guiltily. “Sorry. They need me. There’s stuff to be done.”
“It’s fine. Go have a beer or whatever.”
“We’re not having beer.”
“You sound like I’ve impugned your honor. I don’t really care what you do.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No.”
“Because I saved your life. You were about to die in that underground lake, under that monster’s hands. You realize that, right?”
I didn’t want you to save my life, I wanted to scream, I wanted you to save hers! “Thanks.”
Calix reached across my body. He took my hands.
For the first time since we’d arrived in the graveyard, I tore my eyes from my mother’s casket and looked at him.
He really was so handsome. With his spun-gold hair and chiseled jawline, he looked like an angel, here in the sun.
“Persephone,” he said quietly, earnestly, while the gravedigger dug and studiously ignored us. “I know you’re angry at me, and I don’t know why, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Again, thanks.”
He huffed. “No, that’s not what I meant! Not that it doesn’t matter, but — it doesn’t change anything.” Change anything about what? “I need you to talk to me.”
“I’m talking to you now.”
“I mean about the underworld. I’ve given you two days, but I’m running out of time. I need you to tell me what went on down there.”
This again. Why was he being so insistent? I knew I should ask, but I was too exhausted, and I wanted him to leave so I could get on with resurrecting my mother. He probably wanted the information for some college-boy research paper. “You mean the Gestorbunlund.”
“What?”
“The underworld. They call it the Gestorbunlund. Catacomb land.” He stared at me, his brow furrowing. “You said you wanted to know. Look, we’ll talk later. I’m at my mother’s funeral.”
He had the decency to look chastened. But still he said, more quietly than ever, “No, Persephone, I need to know now. Because we’re going back.”
My blood spiked. “Who’s going back?”
“All of us. Myself, the War Police. The Body has authorized an invasion of the underworld. And they’ve appointed me to lead it.”
No. This didn’t make sense. I couldn’t process it. Calix didn’t know what he was getting into, or else he had gotten his facts mixed up. “Why would the Body appoint a first-year diplomacy student to lead an invasion?”
“Because I grew up here, so I know more about the underworld than anyone else in Corcagia. And because… it was my idea.”
“What?”
“I had to save you somehow,” he said softly. “I had to make a case.” He drew the enormous sapphire from his pocket. “So I did.”
I stared at the jewel, my mind whirring.
No. There was no way Calix had been given a whole-ass War Police squadron in the three days I was underground.
He had to have been planning this for a long time.
When he’d barged into my mother’s house, when I’d shown him my reservoir idea — had the War Police already been on their way?
“Just think, Persephone,” he was saying.
His fist clutched the jewel, which shone as brightly as his eyes.
“We’ll kill all the godlings out in one fell swoop.
No more kidnappings, no more fear, no more of their dark influence.
Limer will finally be able to flourish. We’ll become a great city, a city like Corcagia —”
“You can’t kill all the godlings,” I hissed. “They’re born of Chaos Himself.”
Calix scoffed at this. “The god?”
“Yes. The god.”
But I could tell he was dismissing this as legend or superstition. “I can’t believe you’re being so difficult about this. You should hate the godlings. Yet you act like you miss them.”
“I don’t hate anybody,” I said, tiredly. “And I don’t miss anybody except my mom.”
That, finally, got through to him.
His shoulders slumped. He stopped berating me. He opened his mouth, closed it again, and looked at me with a confused expression: half sympathetic but half insistent on getting his way, which, I had to admit now, was the way Calix had always looked at me.
I wanted to slap the arrogant half off his face. But part of me wanted to reach out to to the sympathetic half, too. He looked all at once like the old Calix, the child-Calix, the one I’d… did I dare even to think it?… the one I’d once fallen in love with.
He touched me briefly on the shoulder. On the cheek.
Something in me swayed and cracked.
And Calix swayed, too.
My body tilted toward him. It slid toward the place it had been in three days ago — or, better yet, fifteen years ago, when both of my parents were alive.
Our hut sturdy, our larder full, the earth outside flush and wet with rain.
And me, troubleless, playing hide-and-seek with Calix in the town square.
Knowing that at the end of the day, I would always let him find me.
One of the soldiers at the edge of the graveyard whooped.
Calix jerked back.
I felt the muscles in my face stiffen. I stared at him, shocked and hurt. The son of a bitch ducked his head and stammered. He began to walk backwards, away from me.
It was all I could do not to touch my lips. “Are you kidding me?” I cried after him. “You’re leaving me for them? You don’t even have anything to say?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You’ll understand later. When we’ve conquered the underworld. When I’ve made you safe.”
“Safe?” I screamed. “SAFE?” But Calix was already gone. Enveloped among his War Police. They clapped him on the back and jeered and swept him off.
I was alone with the gravedigger.
The gravedigger looked at me with pity. Even the fucking gravedigger felt bad for me! “You want a minute alone?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I choked out.
He stuck his shovel carefully in a pile of soil. He squeezed my shoulder as he left, as Josie had.
I had never had cause to visit the graveyard since my father’s funeral, but it occurred to me to wonder if he was the same guy who’d buried my father.
And then I was alone. Just me and the gravestones and the hot sun and the dry wind.
I waited a moment to see if Calix or the gravedigger would come back. Calix especially.
They did not.
So I hiked my skirt above my waist, climbed down into the six-foot-deep pit, pried open the casket with the gravedigger’s shovel, and lifted out my mother.
She reeked of formaldehyde and a little bit of rot.
I threw her unceremoniously out of the pit. It didn’t matter what damage I did to her body. Hades had said the Lake would heal her injuries.
I climbed out and slung her rigid body around my shoulders like it was a wooden board.
Then I set off for the Gestorbunlund.
The sun beat down on my bare shoulders and arms. By the time I arrived at the border, I was scorched. My beautiful dress, which Josie had just had cleaned, was filthy all over again.
With my mother, I crossed the Gestorbunlund border.