Chapter Fourteen #2
I have a long path to take. The sun is sinking. My dress is ruined, and I fear the power of the waves will sweep me away.
I need guidance. I must not be too proud for it. This is nothing like anything I would have expected from the home of a god. It is lonely and howling.
With an effort, I unfurl my fist and reveal the pearl.
It does not take much work to cry. I’m on the edge already, certain I’ve done something wrong and trapped myself in some lonely shell of a world.
Didn’t Vesuvius say they were layered one over the other like wet cloth?
Perhaps I have gone through too many layers.
There is only one who can advise me, but when my tear drops onto the pearl and Vesuvius springs out along a thread of smoke, I wonder if I’ve made a mistake.
Vesuvius takes one look at me and laughs. The stumps of his two missing tentacles look worse than before. They’re crusted over, swollen, and discolored.
“This is your paradise? How diverting.”
“Paradise? You said nothing of paradise.” My voice sounds harsh, even to me.
But in seeing him I’m suddenly very aware of what a disaster this is.
My fine white chiton clings to me uncomfortably, twisting around my calves and tripping me up, and my hair is tangled around my arms like strands of seaweed.
Even if I make it to the meeting of the gods, I will hardly be inconspicuous.
Vesuvius’s gaze is sharp. Always sharp. I fight the urge to step back from what it might reveal. I must be very wary with him near.
“You have done as you said you would. I see no problem. The Resurgence awaits.”
“No.” My voice is bitter with embarrassment. “I have done it wrong and there’s no one here.”
He sneers, but his attention is only half on me. He’s looking around him greedily as if he could eat the view.
“The Resurgence takes place in a plane between the other planes—a half-world of shadow and imagination. Each one to enter sees it differently. You’ve envisioned it as some dead creature upon which you will crawl.
Fitting for a woman who looks like she’s been vomited up by the sea.
” He gestures as if to indicate my garments. “As you do.”
I skip over his criticism. “So this is the fruit of my own imagination?”
He pauses, his beautiful face twisting with a humor I do not share.
“It’s the fruit of someone’s imagination.
If not yours, then perhaps the God of the Sea’s.
This does seem to reflect his spartan heart.
I’ll have you know that when I was God of the Sea, every inch of my heavens were packed with lovely servants and sumptuous repast. The sea is not a lonely wild place, but one full of bounty and power.
In my heaven, there were no barriers to traverse to its very heart.
Here, I think you’ll need to battle your way forward with every step, or it may very well smash you to wreckage on its rocks. ”
I suck in a fortifying breath. Can nothing be simple? “A fine guide you are. You have left out key elements.”
“I am not your nursemaid. Fight or don’t fight. What difference does it make to me?”
“The waters rise each time I move forward,” I say tightly. “Have you an explanation for how to deal with that?”
He smirks and I feel my heart grow thick with hate for him.
“With every word you show me more of my enemy. Perhaps fear is what he is troubled by most. Perhaps your very emotions stir up his seas. A child’s defense, to be sure, but Okeanos was never very sophisticated. I suggest attempting to be calm. If that is even something you can achieve.”
“And where will I find the gods?” I snap. “Should I imagine them up, too?”
He lifts a brow at me like he might not answer me after I’ve taken that tone with him.
“Try to stop thinking like a petulant mortal and more like a god-slayer. They’ll be within the heart of this place.
” He nods ahead of us to where the rock rises and some structure looms high above the sea.
“I hear tell that Okeanos is always late, so that will give you time to go in there and bluff your way into the midst of the rest of them.”
“Are you certain they will be here?”
“This is the Resurgence. If anyone fails to attend, he’ll lose not only his standing but his power, and a god without power isn’t a god for long.
” His mouth twists sourly. “Trust me on this. They will be here. And you will find them. Just stop dallying in the waters like a fish. I will come with you.”
“Won’t your presence alert them?”
“None can see me but she who holds my prison.” He looks at where the sun hangs low in the sky. “Unless you mean to waste both our chances, best hurry.”
But I do not trust him and do not want him with me for this journey. And even if I did, I would need both hands for the effort. I slide his pearl back into my pouch and set to work clambering along the sharp rocks.
I will not relate how many times I fall, nor how often I cut open my knees, my elbows, and even my palms. The rocks are sharp and uninviting, and every time worry threatens me, the waves only grow higher.
I am forced to set aside all concern for what I will face when I arrive and focus solely on the minute-to-minute work of traversing this spinelike ridge of pale rock.
The cold spray of the ocean is unforgiving, chilling my fingers until I cannot feel the rock I grip and making everything slick as if instead of rock I am fighting with living eels.
By the time I reach the towering structure ahead every muscle in my body is shaking and my heartbeat is loud in my mind.
I drag myself from the dark waters, my flesh all goose-bumped and frigid and my soft chiton shredded by rocks and pink with blood.
It is no matter. I have arrived and that is all for which I could have asked.
What appeared only a rocky rise from afar is an awe-inspiring place from a closer view.
A nearly circular isle of white stone is ringed by colossal statues at least five times my own height.
I immediately recognize them as images of the gods—ten statues, one for each of them.
And from the open mouth of each statue pours a fountain of water that runs down the stone, leaving a residue of iron and lichen before trickling to the ground where it washes into the sea.
It is not exactly a room or a hall. These statues would provide no cover at all from the elements, but they serve like a perimeter around a great room and in the center of this room is laid a table.
The table is large enough for an army to feast and laid upon it is a banquet fit for a magnificent harvest year.
A whole tuna lies carved on one end, its carmine flesh sliced delicately and a half lemon placed over one eye, and at the other end of the table sits an entire roast pig on a silver platter, though its eyes are replaced with cherries rather than lemons.
I’d be salivating except for what lies in the center.
It’s not a fish.
It’s not a roast beast.
It’s a dead woman.
Gods, but I hope she’s dead. My heart speeds as I catch sight of her, and I swallow hard, looking in every direction before creeping forward to examine her.
She’s sprawled out across the table, her long silver-pale curls tangling between bunches of grapes and sweating pitchers of melon juice.
Someone has laid a shell over each of her eyes, but no one bothered to lay anything over the jagged slash across her throat.
From its gory center a dozen golden flowers—not yellow, but actual burnished gold—spring up, multiplying even as I watch them.
They smell of honey and frankincense and they are the only thing that moves.
Her chest is still, the breath plucked away already.
In one hand, wrapped around her fingers, are chains of cabochon rubies, fat as hen eggs and cranberry red, just like the blood that drips from her throat and trickles down the side of the table.
She is terribly beautiful. So beautiful that I feel almost as if she can’t be real, but her pale skin—bluish in the extremities—tells a different story, and her beautifully stitched chiton is torn nearly to her hip and stained pink with watered blood.
Fighting sharp stings of fear, I hurry back to the nearest statue and duck behind it, crouching low to hide myself behind his great stone foot.
This table must be laid for the gods, and this poor lady laid out with it.
I dare not let them see me when they come.
All thought of bluffing my way into their company evaporates with the very real dead woman on their table.
That could be me… will be me… unless I can find another way, and the only way to do that will be to watch and wait for the right moment.
I shrink farther against the back side of the statue’s foot. How ironic that I should hide behind the image of he who I aim to destroy, but here I am, taking refuge in the shadow of Okeanos as I wait for the gods to arrive.