Chapter 28 Is She Here for You? #2
The sudden movement of the catacomb knocked Calix and the Vizeking off-balance. The Vizeking made a grab for me —
And Calix hurled himself between us.
“Traitor!” the Vizeking howled at Calix. He grasped at the air. “She’s going to the Lake! She’s going to drown that corpse! Stop her!”
“Drown it? It’s already dead! Persephone!” But Calix kept the Vizeking from grabbing me.
And then I was gone.
Thoughts of Calix reeled in my mind as I ran.
How long had he been working in secret with the Vizeking?
How long had he been forming his army? How long had he been planning to quarter half a thousand violent, ravenous men in our tiny, sleepy village?
Had he even thought about what that would mean for girls like me and Josie?
And what dark plans was the Vizeking working? Why did he want to avoid a sacrifice?
But it didn’t matter. The road sloped hard, without twists and turns.
It folded in on itself behind me, blocking Calix and the Vizeking from following.
I had never known the underworld to operate like this.
Within minutes I stumbled into the empty, glittering throne room.
The King’s cave yawned from its rear like a mouth, and the Lake cavern was dead ahead.
Even from across the chamber, the Lake cavern called to me. Its freezing air gusted into my face. Its strange light flickered, half-blue from the sky and the candle-flames.
I crossed the throne room and entered the cavern.
The surface of the water was as flat and glassy as ever. Overhead, the women in their cocoons rotated like children’s toys.
Was I making it up, or were they rotating just a hair faster than before? Were the candles flickering more wildly?
My muscles seized at the memory of the Lake’s waters folding over my head. My lungs searing as the air ran out. And yet, some animal part of me still wanted so badly to touch the water’s surface.
But I would not. I couldn’t afford to. I knelt on the shore. I was careful as I unwrapped my mother.
The Monarch was finally going to get his meal.
My mother, her dead face shriveled and personless and still caked with makeup, her body still in the black funeral finery that I only now realized had been borrowed from Josie’s mother, waited on the soft, open carpet.
I was glad, in a strange way, that after having unceremoniously hauled her corpse all over the Lümerlund and the Gestorbunlund both, at least here, at the end, I had given her somewhere soft to lie.
I took the pomegranate out of its pouch. Here we go.
I ripped off a chunk of the pomegranate’s rind with my teeth like meat from a bone. I spat it into my hand. Then I stared at the inside of the fruit, almost awed. Shining seeds were packed in there like stars packed in the sky. They glittered. I had never seen anything like it.
I plucked the seeds out one by one and put them in my mouth.
I burst them with my tongue. Their tart tang soaked my lips.
I split the fruit open with my thumbs, scraped the seeds out with my teeth.
In less than a minute the fruit was gone.
I stared almost mournfully at the empty, threadlike white inner rind.
It was the most delicious fruit I’d ever eaten.
If Hades had somehow gotten me to taste this, he might have been able to convince me to eat it a lot sooner.
Hades.
My heart lifted. Soon my mother would be alive, and I would send her back to the Lümerlund. She would even get to keep her soul, because I would have given up my freedom for her.
But then I would return to Hades. There would be no ticking clock — no sacrifice, no starvation, no reservoir. We would have all the time in the world to figure out what to do about Calix and the Vizeking.
He could show me the rest of the underworld. He could sleep in that large, dark bed with me instead of sleeping on the floor. What he’d said about being unable to control himself — he would no longer have to control himself.
I shivered.
I gathered my mother tenderly in my arms. I waded out into the Lake, sighing as the frigid water hit my thighs. I remembered what Hades had done with me. No prayer. No ceremony. Just the offering.
I laid my mother atop the Lake surface — she floated — and pressed her underwater.
With one hand I opened her mouth. I watched as the water flooded into her mouth and nose.
I pictured it flowing into the empty sac that the mortician had made of her stomach, underneath Mrs. Stammerer’s borrowed dress.
I waited to feel her gasp for breath beneath my palm.
But it didn’t happen.
How long was I supposed to have to wait?
I tried to remember how deep Hades had carried me. Maybe if I pushed my mother in a little farther. I waded out as far as I could, up to my breasts, feeling out the smooth Lake floor as gingerly as I could, terrified the floor would drop suddenly and I would fall and drown.
But no, this couldn’t be right. Hades hadn’t even been hip-deep when he’d put his hand on my throat in the Lake.
And whatever strange movement I thought I’d sensed around the Lake earlier — the cocoons, the eddying candles — was gone.
My stomach sank, even as my heart rose with panic. No, no, no. This couldn’t be. I had already eaten the fruit.
Through the soles of my feet, I recognized the vibrations that meant the catacombs were shifting again.
The underworld was opening up. Letting other people into the throne room — or letting me out.
The Monarch had not accepted my sacrifice.
He would not resurrect my mother.