by Opal Edgar
This was too easy.
“We’ll do it. Who took the sword?” I asked.
“How should I know?” she said. “It wore a power thief cape. But whoever it was didn’t feel like any power thief I’ve ever come across. He appeared like a ghost by my banks and struck exactly when I was called to duty by Hades, almost as if he knew I’d be gone. I have no choice when Hades calls but to answer.”
“In other words you have nothing,” Baas said, acid dripping from his tongue.
“Do you think that I would have stayed so long without a soul if I knew the name of the culprit? Do you know who you are talking to! ” the Styx raged.
The whole river rose up in angry waves slapping the bank and spitting dark drops everywhere. But Baas’s anger was stopping him from thinking clearly: the solution was staring us in the face.
“Baas, is a soul like a person?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he said, annoyed at the stupid remark.
“Kemsit can see links between people. There can’t be a stronger link than someone to their soul, can there?” I asked.
Both blinked in surprise.
Two cat naps later, Baas had called in the cavalry. Kemsit and Alpheus bubbled out of the rapids. Kemsit bowed low to the Styx. Alpheus clashed his giant fists to his chest in a gladiator salute. The Styx smiled at him and reached out her hand.
“It has been a long time since I’ve seen one of your kind,” she said. “I miss the golden days when all you creatures ran wild in the hills with the fauns. I always had a soft spot for your kinds’ evils.” She smiled.
“Well, that’s not fair! I’ve been with him forever and I still don’t know what monster he is!” Kemsit exclaimed. “You better not be the one to reveal his secret for him, nymph.”
The Styx zipped her lips comically. Kemsit had this crazy ability to make everyone act lighter and a little silly.
Kemsit stared insistently at Alpheus and pouted. “After this whole thing, you and I are having a talk. I’m serious!” She danced round and her snakes tumbled out of her dress.
I jumped away in horror and bumped into Baas. He snapped at me, teeth gleaming white. I slipped from the stone I’d landed on, swerved to avoid the snakes and tumbled head first into Alpheus. His board clattered down, and as he tried to catch it he trod on a snake’s tail. The four snakes leaped up at the same time. I screamed.
I mean, when did snakes start jumping?
Startled, Kemsit tumbled into the river with a splash. Alpheus, Baas and I all rushed to help her. But the Styx was already there, obviously, Kemsit comfortably nestled in her arms. They looked at each other, then turned to our panicked faces. The surface of the torrent broke in little waves, clapping happily and sending salty spray everywhere. They both laughed. And just like that, the tension broke, without anyone needing the whack of a blade. A smile spread onto all our faces: We were getting that damned sword back, and then it would only be a tiny hop to Elise’s freedom.
The Styx ruffled Kemsit’s hair as she gently pushed her back onto the bank. Sitting cross legged, Kemsit cocked her head. She looked left, right, up and behind. I had a sinking feeling in my gut.
“Okay, this isn’t working. Let’s just do it differently.” Kemsit said, looking serious.
Kemsit walked back into the stream and held onto the grey hand of the Styx, frowning intently. She slowly turned her head round again, as if she was doing neck exercises. The nymph pulled her up into her arms, holding tighter with every passing second.
“I’ve never seen that before,” Kemsit said.
Baas kicked a black rock into a rising root. It bounced on the bark, and the tree let out a scream. Frightened crabs scurried off. “Pestilent goat on a spit! Of course you can’t find her soul. You couldn’t trace Elise. They cut her links too. It’s their speciality! Hurray to new Kemsit erasing powers,” he lashed out.
“No, no, that’s not it at all. Elise’s links all disappeared, like she was …”
She hesitated. The unsaid “reincarnated” resounded in the air as loud as if she’d screamed it.
“Like she was cut off,” finished Kemsit courageously. “That’s not the case here. There is a – I’m not sure how to describe it – an orb radiating in every direction. The Styx is at the centre of all the shoots spreading all over the world. There isn’t a thread to follow, links are radiating from her in every single direction.” Kemsit said.
“This is ridiculous,” the Styx said, putting her down and pulling her hand out of Kemsit’s grip.
The torrent thrashed back at its cyclone speed, propelling a splatter of the ethereal red faces into the air. They screamed as they splashed out of the flow. Their tortured faces grimaced and squirmed until they fell back into the rush.
“It’s you the power thieves are messing with,” Baas exclaimed.
“At first, that’s what I thought.” Kemsit nodded. “But how likely is that? I can still see all the usual links without any problem. So then I thought it was because of all the souls the Styx carries within her, and that I couldn’t focus enough to unweave the thread, but that’s not it at all. The Styx is linked to everything! Everywhere!”
I blinked and then smiled, amazed at myself. I knew where the Styx’s soul was!
“Finally, someone gets it!” Kemsit exclaimed.
“It’s pointing to every direction possible because ’tis all roads that lead to the shadow corridor,” I whispered.
Chapter 21
Without a Shadow of a Doubt
I landed on a sled and zipped down the corridor. Monsters leaped out of the way and— bam! I crashed against a door. I left a nice indented mark were my teeth bit the wood. In fact, a tooth stayed planted in the door as I pulled away.
“Ow!” I exclaimed, pulling it out.
Kemsit strolled to my side. She protected her head from falling objects with a Japanese parasol. Her braids clicked and tinkled from the little bells woven into them. Somehow she had managed to change hairdos. She had a heavy dose of makeup on her eyes, and even her clothes were different. They were more Egyptian looking: with her new gold belt and embroidered ibises on her hems.
She crouched beside me. “Taking a break already? We’re not there yet.”
I showed her the incisor resting in my palm.
“Just stick it back in, dumb-dumb, that what zombies do best!”
I did, appalled. I tried to pull myself up, but it was hard. After forever, I managed a wobbly step, and Alpheus grabbed my arm before I fell back down again. He looked the same as ever: except for the claw and teeth marks on his skin. Alpheus leaned forward a little and a bit of flesh on his chest flapped down, raw and bloody. I gagged. He worried when nothing came up. Jeez, thanks, but I really didn’t want to vomit.
“How long without food?” appeared on his slate.
“I munched on a few nuts when waiting for you by the Styx.” I shrugged. “Let’s go. We’re so close to the goal.”
“How do you think you can help Elise if you don’t help yourself?” Kemsit complained.
Baas, to my surprise, agreed wholeheartedly. He, unlike Kemsit, had reverse cleaned up, if that made sense. And that wasn’t an easy feat considering what he’d been left with after our fight with the Grim Reaper and the thrashing river. Now, he wore a dusty yellowing shirt, ripped at the sleeves. His collar hung on his shoulder, where only half of the seam kept it in place. He was still wearing puffy knee-length trousers, but patched up black ones now, and one of his dubious long beige socks had rolled down. In fact, he was even missing a shoe. His long hair was a mess, his face was bruised and his neck was adorned with nasty strangulation marks. What was going on? The luxurious sheath on his hip looked totally out of place.
He pushed his flask at me once again.
“And it’s still human blood in there.” I grimaced, pushing it back.
An inverted tug-of-war started: where he pushed the flask at me, and I pushed it back. Quickly, it escalated in fierceness. Baas smacked it against my arm and I f
elt the skin burst. A green stain appeared on my sleeve. I pretended to ignore it, but the smell was too horrid. Tears appeared in Baas’s baby blues. I decisively grabbed onto the flask with both hands and shoved it back into his pocket. He whisked it out, swung his arm backwards and ... stopped mid-motion. A banana dangled in front of my face. Alpheus held it there. I threw myself at it, shovelling it down, skin and all.
I mumbled a thank you, mouth full. He handed me an exotic fruit I had never seen before. As soon as it was gone he had a new one for me, shaped like a rugby ball with sweet orange flesh and a giant pip in the middle. I crunched through everything that kept coming my way. I gobbled them as fast as they came. Even the deep orange one that smelt like baby puke and was filled with pips. I felt my skin knitting back together and the air cleanse itself of my stink – strength grew in my muscles and my smashed face repaired itself. When I could finally lift my eyes from the food, Alpheus handed me a banana-leaf basket with flowers weaved between the knotted leaves. There was a small bowl of rice in the centre.
“Where did you get that?” I asked, full of gratitude.
He pointed at a broken table in the middle of the shadow corridor and turned his slate so I could see written: “Gifts for the spirits and the ancients.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“That someone asked for a favour from spirits, or something, and sent a gift our way.” Kemsit shrugged.
She turned the basket over and the rice fell on the floor. Two purple men threw her a dark look, and I kind of agreed. Food should never be wasted. So I cleaned it up – the bits of ceramic ground into it gave it an interesting texture.
She chucked the basket over her shoulder, muttering that people didn’t even sign their gifts properly anymore. She then tugged at my sleeve and I got to see a brand new tattoo. She squinted at it.
“You owe Ina Ni Luh Pande a favour,” Kemsit said.
“Now?” I asked, bewildered.
“No.” She laughed.
I got my wrist back and read the printed name on my skin. What was it about using your body as a memo pad in the afterlife? Practical, but hadn’t they ever heard of paper here? I rubbed the name, hoping against all reason it would fade. It didn’t.
“Do it whenever you want,” Kemsit explained. “But those things have a tendency to catch up with you when you’re least prepared, so don’t leave it hanging too long.”
I nodded, my to do list had no end. Between becoming a spirit, saving Elise, getting her world back, stopping the power thieves from eating me, uniting the Styx with her soul, freeing all the other souls from the Grim Reaper’s mirror sand and fixing my Oracle debt, it felt like I’d hardly get the time I needed to help Ina. But who’s not up to a challenge? Thanks to her … or maybe him, I had no idea, thanks to them, I wasn’t rotting anymore.
Kemsit pretended to hold onto an imaginary bobbin, winding it as she walked forth. She moved in front of me, revealing a massive gash in the back of her head. The bloody stain dripped down onto her long dress.
This was what they`d looked like when they’d died. The realisation hit me like a bucket of concrete. They’d really had terrible endings, the whole lot of them. I looked down. I was still in that awful brown suit. It was dry and impeccable again. The jacket had come back better than a boomerang. But that wasn’t what I’d been wearing when I’d died. Why the hell was it plaguing me?
Alpheus fell in right behind Kemsit and I took up the rear with Baas.
I caught sight of my new amber eyes in a mirror as we walked. Baas also noticed his reflection. He didn’t say a word, but I felt bad.
“Should we turn into mist or something before meeting the person with the Bartholomew sword?”
“I would rather not,” he said. “We were lucky that’s all that got inverted. Imagine if I’d inherited all of your ugly mug? I’d look like a real whip-thrashing Masta all right.”
I opened my mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say to that. Yours truly: the face of evil. And then it hit me – Baas was giving me his eyes, night vision and all. “True, if you’d ended up with my brain you’d be a worse-than-useless dimwit now.”
Baas threw me a sideways smile as he tapped my shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
“Not yet, but soon,” I joked.
And he laughed. I was so thankful to him.
“We’re almost there!” Kemsit exclaimed, sounding as excited as a kid at their first fireworks display.
We stepped over rolling grapes, jumped over a family of hobbits, spilt a crate of toys and found ourselves staring at a tiny renaissance painting of a man with a particularly big nose. Ironically, that painting was two doors down from Bartholomew’s place. Talk about hiding in plain sight!
“It goes through the wall,” Miss Obvious said. “I don’t know if it’s the spirit on the left or the right who’s got it.”
“Only spirits live here? Does it mean a spirit stole the sword? A neighbour of Bartholomew? And never even told him?”
“Looks like it,” Baas said, going to the closest door: the one on the left, which was lined with vertical wrought iron bars, like a prison.
I couldn’t imagine voluntarily locking myself in there, but to each their own.
“Being a spirit doesn’t mean being an angel. In fact, being a spirit has very little to do with morals of the living,” Baas added.
Kemsit frowned at him, because everyone knew angels were monsters. He tried explaining that he was using vocabulary I would understand, but she was having none of it: teaching falsehoods was the ultimate sin.
Tired of the argument, Alpheus lifted his fist to bang on the door on the other side. It hovered over the carved gold surface. Intricate geometric patterns were broken by scenes from Aesop’s fables. It was beautiful. Kemsit, the flitting hummingbird, flew to him and swatted his big paw away before he could knock.
“Baas and I are the smooth talkers, we’ll play diplomats,” Kemsit sweetly explained. She pointed at Alpheus and I. “You two are the muscles. Stay in the middle until one of us screams for help. Then, you run in and save us.”
Baas laughed into his sleeve. He had seen me at my best, and that wasn’t impressive. Which meant I was in the way once again. I seriously needed to get some type of talent going, because stacking a brick wall was not going to cut it out here … well, except maybe when I would help Elise build her world again. I was ready to shovel mortar to the end of time if necessary. In the meantime, asking Alpheus or Baas to teach me to fight sounded like a plan.
Baas and Kemsit knocked at the same time. Kemsit startled us with her furious banging. It rattled throughout the corridor and echoed unnaturally for a while. I’d always thought a room had to be huge and empty to echo. Not here. Baas’s three knocks were much more ominous, slow and determined.
“But spirits can’t be bad guys, right? There’s no bad guys here?”
“Noooo.” Kemsit hesitated. “Only spirits that want to help the rest of us poor lost souls stay here. But there is no good or bad like you understand it. And you’d have to be a pretty messed up spirit if you want to hang round people that are still working out their kinks.” She winked.
The doors didn’t budge. Alpheus balled his hands and released them. Ball, and release. Baas stared at his door with all the immobility of a snowman: no twitch, no blink, no shuffle. We weren’t going to get very far if we let locked doors block our way.
“Bartholomew is just a couple of doors down. Maybe we can get him to help,” I said.
“Why not.” Kemsit shrugged. “Make yourselves useful!”
Alpheus and I backpedalled, leaving the others to their watch. Bartholomew’s name was neatly printed in gothic letters on a tiny plaque next to his door. I wasn’t sure he’d want to talk to me. And I sure as hell wasn’t looking forward to meeting his ogress assistant again. But I was ready to do just about anything to get things moving now. I knocked.
Nothing.
Was this whole side of the corridor empty? Had the
y gone on a massive holiday, leaving us all in the dark? Except for us, this part of the corridor was pretty quiet. The door creaked open a fraction. I pushed, but it resisted. No light spilt from the inside. We put our backs into it. Grinding our teeth.
We tipped in.
I fell on my backside, away from the ever glowing ceiling, into the dark room. Alpheus hadn’t been tricked. He shoved me aside to get in. This was odd, like stepping into a factory after closing hours. I rolled back up. Lucky, I still had Baas’s eyes. The door slammed shut as soon as Alpheus let go. He leaped at the door knob. He rattled, pulled, swivelled and pulled harder! The door concaved. Just how strong was he? Yet it remained shut.
“LOCKED!” appeared on his slate. I nodded, and then remembered it was pitch-black in here.
“Let's find Bartholomew, fast,” I started. “Can you see anything at all?”
He lifted his hand, palm down, and rocked it slightly. So he could, even if just a little. Normal eyes would have been more than useless here. What kind of face was Alpheus hiding under his helmet? But, now wasn’t the time to dwell.
The ogress’s large pink desk was still in place, with tidy files and office materials, but her shelves were empty. The plants were gone. A dust bunny rolled as ominously as tumbleweed over the pink ledgers. If she’d had a cup: it was probably being walked in a cardboard box far from here. At least I hoped nothing worse had happened to her than being let go. The back of my neck prickled like someone was blowing on it.
Alpheus tapped the potions on the shelves. Blowing the dust off them. How long ago had my evaluation been?
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here lately,” I said. “Can you get fired in the afterworld? Somehow, with her gone it’s even creepier than her lurking in the shadows.”
Alpheus turned his head towards me and jumped backwards.
“DON’T TURN ROUND!” appeared on his slate.