26 #3
I recognize the melody as one he hums at the oikos, but I’ve never heard him sing the words. The lyrics crash over me and drag me under, trapping me in their undertow.
The song he sings – is about me. I cover my mouth with my hand.
Cillian cups my elbow. I twist to look up at him, confused as tears spill down my cheeks. Did he know? The thin pinch of his lips and the pity on his brow tell me he’s heard it before.
My brother knows this song. Knows its words. And he didn’t tell me about it because he knew this was how I’d feel and react. Like this, or far worse, because the lyrics are another sort of mirror and he knows how much I hate my reflection.
August paints my past with strokes that are equally vivid and delicate. Words that are cutting and harsh. Careful and gentle. Each one purposeful.
On his canvas, I’m a phoenix Ares cut down, and he sings the story of how I rose again.
Aphrodite had asked him if he was going to write another heartrending song and she looked pointedly at me.
At the time, I didn’t know what she meant.
Or that this – I press my eyes closed – this song is why the beloved August Aymes was dragged here.
“It’s working!” Cillian says, relieved.
The pole is long and heavy for the small boy to maneuver, but he’s steadily making his way back across the river.
Aymes paces the shore, then kisses his hand and tosses it to his baby brother, who smiles and pretends to catch it and put it in his pocket. All those kisses weren’t for a lover at all. I bet hearts are breaking all across the realms.
August starts singing an upbeat song I recognize from years ago, but I can still only hear the harrowing words he sang about me. They resonate through my mind, pulsing like they have a heart, moving through me like the ripples spreading over the river’s otherwise still surface.
Wait…
Until now, the river hasn’t been anything but strangely placid, even with so many boats.
“What was that?” I ask Cillian, pointing to the water.
A strange fin, scalloped and spindly, breaches. “August!” I scream as the creature bumps the hull of his brother’s boat, knocking him off balance.
Two things happen at once: the boy splashes in, and August dives over the mud bank and into the Lethe, swimming for his brother.
Cillian jumps in to help. I catch movement out of the corner of my eye and see Torsten’s mother cutting a path toward us. The Norseman follows, growling his curses and complaints, telling her they need to go if they want to win.
When she snaps at him, he stops his muttering.
He has her sandy hair, sharp eyes, and tongue.
“Go!” Torsten’s mother tells him, pointing to the river. “He’s just a boy. Swim out and help. We’ll make a bridge to you.”
Without another word of protest, Torsten shucks off his muddy armor and leaps in.
August reaches his brother and holds his head up so he doesn’t go under. He swims them both toward the shore, but the water is viscous, like dark honey.
Cillian is almost to them when he screams, “It’s circling back!”
The beast’s fin disappears downstream.
I jump into the water on Torsten’s left, gasping at the shock of cold.
Torsten’s mother throws the golden spear to me. “For the creature!” Then she takes August’s blade and stabs it into the thick mud before jumping into the shallow water, keeping one hand on the pommel and reaching the other out for me to grasp. “Form a bridge! Hurry!”
I take her hand. Torsten clasps my other one. He strains to grip Cillian’s.
Cillian grabs August. Then Torsten’s mother reels us in as we kick.
“Stand up,” she tells me.
But I’m stuck. I try to tug my legs, but I’m afraid the mud’s suction will unlock the pin in my prosthesis. When I curse, Torsten bellows a laugh.
“Callalie Ryan, are you stuck in the mud?”
I glare at him.
“Allow me to even our score, then!” Torsten chuckles as he trudges out of the water. He takes hold of me like a bride, waiting as my legs rise from the muck before carrying me to the shore, where he unceremoniously drops me in the ash.
A cloud of it plumes around me. I am coated. I look like I did when Cillian bombed me in the face with flour when we were kids.
“Torsten!” his mother chastises.
But he just laughs, taking the boy when August pushes him forward and tossing him beside me.
I pat the poor kid’s back as he coughs, wiping his face on his sleeve.
He shivers, both from the cold and shock, I imagine.
I pull him into my side as Cillian and August scramble to safety.
Ripples spread from where they were just swimming as the beast swims past.
Torsten and his mother turn to leave, but Torsten stops and freezes, staring ahead. I don’t see a threat between us and the portal. Did he forget something?
A group of people up ahead – Niall and Fiona, Koda and a girl I assume is his granddaughter, Tae and her father, Elias and his brother, maybe? They embrace and exchange words with their loved ones. Two by two, they turn to finish the race, all abruptly stopping like Torsten did.
What’s going on? No one is running to the arena like they should be. Is something else lurking in the ash grounds?
“We need to go,” I breathe to Cillian.
August scoops his brother up.
The moment I take a step toward the portal, everything goes dark. I can’t see my feet. Or my hand when I wave it in front of me. There’s no bright doorway in the distance. I see nothing at all.
“Come on,” Cillian says. His footsteps trail away. “Cal, come on. What are you waiting for?”
Ragged breath tears from my lungs. “Cillian, can you see?”
Footsteps return. “Of course I can see. Can’t you?”
“No.”
“I can’t, either,” August pants.
Fabric rustles as my brother moves to look around us. “It looks like none of the contestants can. Everyone’s stopped.”
I stop to think. “Torsten said that river represented the Lethe. If that’s true, then maybe this whole trial is based on the Underworld. Eurydice had to follow Orpheus out. If he looked back at any point to make sure she was there – if he didn’t trust her to walk behind him – she’d have to stay.”
“But I can look back at you,” Cillian argues.
“I think it’s a sort of twist, or a reversal. From behind, Eurydice could see Orpheus as they walked. She followed him without question. You need to lead me out of here, knowing I won’t be able to see you.”
“I can do that,” he says.
“Good. Because if we don’t make it to the portal, we won’t make it out of this trial.”
Cillian mutters, “ò mo chreach!” Something our father used to say. Oh my ruin.
Carina taught it to him when he was just a boy. A simple bridge to a man he couldn’t remember but desperately longed to.
“I’ll just take your hand,” Cillian says. I hold mine out, waiting, but never feel him grasp it. “Callalie, something’s keeping me from touching you.”
“I don’t know what to do,” August’s brother says nervously from my right.
My brother is more than capable, but the gods expect a child to guide August out of the ash lands? “Cill?”
My brother kneels beside August’s brother. “What’s your name?”
The boy hesitates.
August tells him, “It’s okay. Cillian and Callalie are my friends.”
“Callalie?” the small voice squeaks.
“That’s right,” August confirms.
“Callalie Ryan?” the boy repeats excitedly.
“Yep,” Aymes affirms. “And the man talking to you is her younger brother, Cillian Ryan.”
“My name’s Aster,” he volunteers through chattering teeth.
“Can I try to hold your hand, Aster?” I can hear Cillian’s grin.
“Sure!” I hear shifting.
“I can’t reach him,” Cillian reveals. “Tell you what. Can you stay beside me, Aster? You walk when I do. We’ll make a game of it.”
“I can do that,” the boy agrees.
Suddenly, I stagger as Cillian’s voice sounds all around me. From every direction, he speaks. I cover my ears from the din. “Cillian!”
“What is it?” I think my brother replies. But I can’t tell if it’s him. A thousand of his voices speak to me all at once, in various tones and volumes. In shouts and whispers. In thoughts.
“What’s happening to them?” a young voice resounds.
Above the tumult, loud as a crack of thunder, Cillian screams, “Callalie – tell me what’s going on!”
I wince. “All I hear is your voice, but it’s coming from all around me. I can’t tell which one is truly you or if any of them are!”
A headache starts to pound at my temples.
Another booming answer stands out from the rest of the echoes. “What can I do?” he yells. “Tell me what to do, Callalie.”
“I don’t know!”
Another confusing moment screams by.
Then, amid the innocuous and insidious mimicry of my brother, Cillian’s horrific singing rises. He sings off-key and his voice is atrocious, but I can tell him from the false voices.
It makes me smile like a fool. A fool who is grateful he’s here, even if I shouldn’t be. A sister who’s glad her brother is alive and well, leading her the way she led him when they were kids, and moments ago at the river. “Keep singing, Cillian. Sing us out of here.”
Orpheus and Eurydice’s was a story about doubt overwhelming trust, but I trust my brother completely. And that trust overwhelms Hades’s lies as I follow him through the ash. Even as the voices grow louder in their attempt to drown his gods awful song.
The divine will never understand what it’s like to love someone with your whole heart and know they love you back as fiercely and faithfully.
When we finally reach the portal, Cillian shouts so August and I can hear, telling Aster to go through first. He instructs August to walk through next.