The Korinniad

by A. K. Caggiano

  “He’s the former king of Aegina, a world-renowned settler of arguments between gods and men alike, stopped the Delphic draught with a single prayer, and his favorite color is dandelion yellow. Meet Aeacus!”

  The man nodded at them in the silence after his introduction. Their gaunt spokesman flashed them a look, and Nikeros brought his hands together slowly. The others joined in, a smattering of odd claps echoing in the chamber.

  Thanatos grumbled, “That’s more like it. Now! Our second judge is widely known as the wisest of kings. He brings compassion, justice, and a love of kittens to the table. I call him Mister Cuddle Butt, but you might know him better as Rhadamanthus!”

  A second beam lit the shadows just beside Aeacus illuminating another bearded man, but this one had a rounder face and wore a deep crimson head covering. The hollows of his eyes were creased deeply with years of wearing the same broad grin he did now, and he practically vibrated with excitement, waving at the newcomers, who managed, this time, to clap more voraciously.

  “And finally, the king you love to hate, the first king—and tyrant—of Crete, and the father of exactly zero people who were half bull, Minos!”

  The last beam illuminated the final man sitting in the most gilded of the thrones. He slouched in his seat, his head hanging back as if he were already dreadfully bored even though they’d just started…whatever this was.

  The group clapped again, swept up in the excitement now, but Nikeros’s hand eased Korinna to stop. He leaned in close and whispered, “You would especially hate that guy.”

  “This,”—Thanatos threw his arms out—“is the Room! Of! Judgment!”

  This time, they did not clap at all, only stared blankly at Thanatos. “You said,” quipped the princess, and she folded her arms across her chest.

  The man grunted and blinked at her. “Fine then, have fun.” And he stepped back into the shadows.

  The kings were bearing down on them, large and looming from their raised thrones. “So,” began Aeacus in a hearty bass, “What have you prepared to sing for us?”

  “Sing?” Korinna blanched, but Erepho took a step forward, slapping his chest and puffing up with a deep breath.

  “They don’t really mean sing.” Thanatos slipped out of the shadows just next to her, making her jump. “They just want you to tell them a story. Sometimes people do it in meter. Well, okay, people almost never do it in meter, but that’s what they always expect.” He rolled his bulbous eyes, and she could swear she heard them rattle.

  “To decipher where your soul should rest for eternity, we must weigh its worth through song,” Aeacus explained.

  Rhadamanthus clasped his hands together and smiled. “It’s just so nice to hear how you mortals are getting on with things nowadays.”

  “Nice?” Aeacus leaned back. “You think that last guy was nice?”

  “Well.” Rhadamanthus pondered this a moment, fingers pressed against his lips. “He did really seem to love his sons.”

  Aeacus grunted, “He kept having their wives murdered for birthing daughters.”

  The second king wavered. “He was really dedicated to his lineage.”

  “There were fifteen of them! You saw them all!”

  “Everyone has their flaws.”

  Korinna swallowed hard. These were not her peers.

  “We can’t send everyone to Elysium, Rhadamanthus!”

  “Well, why the Hades not?”

  Aeacus grit his teeth and leaned in. “Then what would be the point of us?”

  Minos let out a long, loud sigh and sat up. “We all know Rhadamanthus is an idiot. Let’s move on. You, Mortals,”—he pointed at them with a boney finger—“You’re not truly dead, are you?”

  The suitors bunched together at the accusatory tone of the third king, hiding behind Korinna. She huffed, “Not exactly, no, and that’s what I was trying to say. So if you just want to get us out of your beards, we’d be happy to leave if you could just point us in the direction of Hades—”

  “You’re already here, Mortal,” Rhadamanthus chirped, “Why not just regale us anyway?”

  Korinna could hear Erepho taking another breath to start up again, but quickly cut in, “No, I mean, we’re trying to get to Hades, the dude, er, god.”

  “The god of the Underworld?” Aeacus looked down the long bridge of his nose. “What are you planning to do? Try and barter for someone’s soul?” He began to laugh, and then the laughter spread to Rhadamanthus, and even Minos snorted a bit. When Korinna bit her lip, unable to respond, Aeacus sat back. “Oh, you are.”

  “If whoever you’re looking for is in Tartarus, there’s no way he’s getting out,” Minos growled, his fingers digging into the arms of his throne.

  “Leon is not in Tartarus,” Princess Phille shouted. The girl was shaking, her hands in tight fists, but there was fury in her eyes. “He is good, and kind, and I want him back.”

  The fires crackled in the braziers around them as the kings surveyed her with long stares. Finally, Rhadamanthus clapped his hands together. “I think she’s adorable: to Elysium with her!”

  “No, no.” Aeacus waved at him. “They don’t belong here at all, their presence is bound to be terribly disruptive to the others. We should send them back.”

  “Or,”—the third king leaned in—“we could keep them. There’s really no disrupting what goes on in Tartarus.”

  “Oh, stop it!” Rhadamanthus slapped his arm playfully. “You’re scaring them!”

  Aeacus twisted his lips and glowered. “The living don’t go over to the other side.”

  Minos slouched again. “And they certainly don’t come back when they do.”

  “Well, sometimes!” The middle king brightened. “I mean there was that one fella with the golden branch and that other guy with all the blood.”

  “That was a mess.” Thanatos popped out from the shadow again beside Erepho who leapt away from him and into Andreas’s arms.

  “Enough. Let’s just vote.”

  Korinna gasped, waving her arms so that Aeacus would see. “Wait! Can I just say, the gods sent us here to retrieve this soul, so, I mean, we wouldn’t want to get on their bad sides, would we?”

  “Oh, and then what?” Minos scoffed, “They might doom us to judge every mortal soul for eternity?”

  Korinna fell silent as Aeacus raised his arm once more, calling out, “Send them topside!”

  “Elysium!” Rhadamanthus cheered.

  And Minos rolled his eyes. “Tartarus, of course.”

  “It’s a draw,” Aeacus huffed, fluttering his hand, “Again!” The wall behind them alighted with torches to reveal a single hallway that lead into darkness. All three kings sighed in their own way, slouching back.

  Thanatos grumbled, sauntering out before the group. “Always a tie with these buffoons.” Then he put on his wide grin and beckoned to them with a skeletal finger. “Come on, now, all of you.”

  “Where are we going?” Korinna followed him, knowing there was little other choice.

  “It will be up to the Moirai,” Aeacus told her as the group passed him high on his throne.

  Aeacus was mistaken, of course, as the Moirai didn’t really give two snips of a spinner’s shears where they ended up—their souls and bodies were still attached, and so their threads remained intact and knotted up. The Moirai weren’t even very sure what happened to souls once their threads were cut, but they did understand that the owners of their knot-iest threads would only be shades in whatever Underworld realm they ended up, and so they assumed things couldn’t get much worse. The black, glittering isle of the Moirai blinked for a single instance into the middle of the Adriatic Sea just then, and a passing wryneck shit right onto Lachesis’s shoulder.

  The lights above the kings snapped off, plunging the room’s center into darkness. From the shadows, Rhadamanthus whispered, “May Tyche smile upon you!”

  And Minos grumbled, “Shut up, you idiot.”

  The dimly lit hall spilled out into a slightly wid
er space. To their right an archway was laid into the wall made up of oxen horns, polished to near translucence, and to the left another arch of long, ivory tusks, overlapping one another. Directly before them were three more paths, each as dark as the last, with nothing to distinguish them.

  Thanatos crossed stick-like arms and tapped a foot. “Well?”

  “It’s up to us?” asked Korinna.

  “The best plan will be to split up to cover more ground,” Andreas announced, grabbing Korinna’s arm, “We shall go that way, and the rest of you can—”

  “No way!” Erepho sliced through the air with his hand. “As a master of all that is dark and otherworldly, Korinna will be safest with me.”

  Calix reached around and poked Erepho’s far shoulder causing the man to jump, then he jiggled his purse. “I can offer our paramour the best protection.”

  As the three fell into quarreling, Korinna broke free of them. “It would be unfair if I went with any of you. Calix, I’m sure your sister would appreciate your company, and Andreas and Erepho, that leaves the two of you.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I’ll go with Nikeros, of course.” She glanced at him to see that he was smirking like an asshole.

  When he saw she was looking at him, he cleared his throat and quickly directed her attention to the nondescript passages. “These three will lead us deeper into Hades, but I cannot say which will take us where.”

  “Well, we want that one!” Calix stammered, pointing to the middle.

  Phille peered deeply into the passage but did not pass the threshold. “Why?”

  “I…well, I do not trust the Erote to pick for us.”

  “Fine.” Korinna rolled her eyes. “And you two?”

  Erepho began to inspect the others, but just as he leaned down before the first of the passages, Andreas booted him in the ass and he fell forward, disappearing into the nothingness. “We will go here. Gods speed, my love.” And with a touch of his hand to Korinna’s cheek, Andreas jumped in after the bard.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  On the other side of the third archway, Korinna was blinded by brightness. She had the sudden hope that they’d entered the Elysian Fields, brilliant and white, serenity coming over her at the mere thought, and she felt her entire body relax. But as her eyes adjusted, Korinna was jolted into uncertainty at the complete strangeness of the world that had materialized around them.

  Buildings, identical in shape and lined up in neat, long rows, ran down away from them as far as they could see, but they were not the stark white of the buildings in Zafolas or even the creamy, yellowed color of the larger structures she’d seen in Theopopolis. These were artificially colored, surely, in bright pinks and blues and yellows. And their roofs were not thatched or hardened mud, but came to gray and copper-colored peaks, perfect in their shape.

  From where she stood with Nikeros, they could see the little buildings went on for a terribly long distance and then out to either side as well, the roofs blending together like a sea of completely still waves. It was so orderly that it dizzied her to stare for too long. Perfectly square patches of greenery were laid out at the front of each building, divided by short, white fences that didn’t seem like they would be terribly good for holding in goats or cattle, not that there was room enough for more than one animal. Here, there were differences though—sometimes a grouping of flowers, sometimes a small banner fluttering in more artificial colors. Again, Korinna felt dizzy, and she turned to Nikeros. “I don’t think these are the Elysian Fields, do you?”

  Just as he went to answer, there was a gust of wind that blew past—no, through them. Korinna felt her body stretch and expand in a way that was completely new, and in the short second she managed to look down at herself, she saw her entire right side disappear as if it were dust, then immediately rematerialize. In that same moment, she saw a shining, massive swath of metal fly past her, and she thought surely she’d been run through by the Underworld’s largest sword.

  But, oddest of all, it had not hurt. Sure it felt disgusting, and Korinna immediately began to itch at her skin where it had disappeared, but pain never came. Instead, she was shocked, horrified even, as she saw the metal beast fly away and down the wide, flat, weird road they were standing on.

  Nikeros too was scratching at his arm, his face a show of terror and intrigue. “It went right through us!”

  Korinna had not liked that, and she wasn’t wanting to feel it again, so she pulled Nikeros off from the road to another, smaller road running alongside it. This should be safe, she thought, when she caught sight of another mortal traversing it and paying no mind to the metal monster that had just run them through, but when they came closer to the mortal, she paused. Again, it was familiar in a way, still a human with a body and face like her own, but dressed peculiarly in a chiton that was much more intricately designed in multiple pieces of tight-fitting, brilliantly-colored fabrics.

  The mortal was coming toward them and pushing ahead of her something large and on wheels. She was looking down into the cart and speaking softly, and when she got to both Nikeros and Korinna, showed no signs of stopping. They attempted to hail her but had to jump out of the way to not be run over. Korinna could see as the woman walked away that inside her cart was a human baby wrapped in pale pink blankets, and though the woman did not notice her, she most definitely caught the baby’s eye. She waved, and the baby giggled and waved back, but when the woman turned over her shoulder, she squinted and shrugged as if Korinna were invisible.

  “Asphodel,” Nikeros said.

  “What?”

  “The flowers.” He pointed down the road, and Korinna noticed then the cones of white flowers that littered the grassy places before the buildings. There were hundreds of them in little bushels everywhere. “We must be in the Asphodel Meadows.” He reached over the short fence they stood beside and plucked one of the blooms from its long stem.

  Korinna took the overly large bloom in both hands. She admired its slender, white petals and star shape and even its alien-looking stamens that twisted out from the flower’s center and ended in a yellowy puff of pollen. But it only lasted a moment before the flower deteriorated, turning brown and shriveling up until it was only ash in her hands. With wide eyes, she looked back up to Nikeros. “Was that supposed to happen?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure we’re not in Tartarus?” She wrapped her hands around herself, taking in the strangeness of the place.

  “I do not think a baby would end up in Tartarus,” he told her with a little chuckle, “But I do feel bad for the others.”

  Korinna cringed, hoping that at least the Princess hadn’t been subjected to whatever lay in the deepest abyss of torment for evil souls. Then she gasped. The archway they’d come through—it didn’t exist any longer. “How are we supposed to get back?”

  Nikeros shrugged. “I don’t know if there is any going back to where we were. We should probably just focus on finding Leon’s soul for now and getting out after.”

  “Do you think he’s here?” she asked hesitantly.

  Nikeros’s hands were on his hips as he took at the long road ahead. “I hope so.”

  The small pathway they stood on went on in two directions, identical both ways. “How are we supposed to find him?”

  They started walking the route the woman with the baby had gone and came upon a few other souls who didn’t acknowledge their presence at all. “I’d like to ask someone,” Nikeros said as they passed a couple who would have bumped right into him if he didn’t jump out of the way, “But I think we’re invisible to these people.”

  Korinna wound around an elderly woman with a mass of blue curls piled high on her head. They were human, mortal-looking even, but their dress was so odd. The colors stuck out to her first, so bright and spectacular, and many materials were even painted by what she could only assume were the steadiest of hands to look so perfect. And the cuts were strange as well
: most had their shoulders and arms covered, but their legs were either halfway bare or they were wearing strange tubes of fabric over each. Still in the chiton Hera had chosen for her, she felt more exposed than the others, but compared to Nikeros with his shorter tunic, bare shoulder, and wings on full display, she could at least pass if she had to. “It’s probably a good thing they can’t see us, but that baby definitely saw me.”

  Nikeros walked up to a post with a box on its top and a little metal flag attached to its side. “Babies aren’t notorious for giving great directions.” He flipped open the end of the box and looked inside, but it was empty. “If only we had some way to send a message to these souls.”

  Korinna waved to a woman standing behind one of the fences. The woman waved back, but then another person’s voice came from behind Korinna, and she hopped out of the way before she was trampled, and the two began to chat with one another. “They’re not just souls though, are they? They have lives here. They don’t act like they’re dead. They act like we’re dead.”

  They continued down the pathway where it eventually split off, and the small houses changed. Instead of identical squares in neat little rows, the buildings here were a little taller, with big glass panes in their fronts and signage Korinna couldn’t read even if it had been in a language she recognized. But there were also paintings, albeit in a style so lifelike she didn’t think possible to make with human hands.

  “This looks like their marketplace.” They passed a number of people carrying items in bags made of a thin, brown parchment. “Do you think you need drachma in the afterlife?” Korinna twisted her head toward Nikeros. “That really does sound like Tartarus.”

  “If so, Calix will be just fine.” Then his tone went a bit icy. “And you too, I imagine.”

  She stumbled over her words as she narrowly avoided a long rope pulled taut between a woman and a fairly useless looking hound who barked at her with a piercing little yap. “What’s that supposed to mean?”