The Korinniad

by A. K. Caggiano

  He wouldn’t look at her. “His little display at the ferry seemed to impress you.”

  “Did it?”

  He asked quickly, “Do you like him best now?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied quietly. She certainly didn’t know the answer, and now was not the time to try and make up her mind, but he was an Erote, she supposed, and his mind was always on one thing. But what was with that tone? “Frankly, if I liked Calix best wouldn’t I be running through Tartarus with him right now?”

  The Erote stopped to consider this, then said something, but Korinna could not hear him over the jolt she’d suddenly had in her heart. Without thinking, Korinna stepped off the seemingly safe pathway and into the wider road to get a better look. The crowd was thicker, and it was hard to tell from where she stood, but she was almost certain of what she saw.

  “What are you doing?” Nikeros’s voice came from behind her, but if she turned, she’d lose her for sure.

  Korinna stopped trying to maneuver around the others. It felt, for lack of a better word, icky, but she passed through the people that got in her way, feeling her body break apart and come back together. She barely noticed the visible chills the others were getting or heard their shocked gasps.

  Still, it wasn’t enough, and the woman who she’d been trying to catch up to disappeared. Or perhaps she hadn’t existed at all. Korinna found herself standing in the midst of the crowd and turned back. Nikeros was still avoiding the souls by bobbing unceremoniously between them and calling out for her. When he reached her, he pulled her toward a tree and away from the others. Korinna glanced down at the small group of asphodel they were now stepping on in a bit in a daze. The blooms withered around their ankles.

  “Are you all right?” Nikeros looked deeply into her eyes and held her arm lightly but with a reassuring force.

  She wanted very much to tell him, but for some reason her mouth did something different. “Yes! I mean, I thought I saw the prince, but it just wasn’t.”

  He looked at her sidelong. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” She focused back on what used to be asphodel at her feet. Then his grip on her arm tightened. Alarmed, she looked at him again, but his eyes had locked onto something across the marketplace.

  “What?” She could feel the tension in his stance. Neither moved for a long moment, but she let her eyes scan the crowd. There were plenty of mortals milling about completely oblivious to them, each as odd as the next in their strange fashions, but one wearing a brilliantly blue set of clothing and a soft helmet in the same hue stood out. The figure was still while the others around her moved. Then her eyes turned just on them.

  “I think we’ve been spotted.” Nikeros took a step backward, and Korinna followed suit. The figure began toward them with purpose.

  Korinna watched as the mortal crossed the roads, eyes set frighteningly. “Should we be running?”

  Nikeros nodded. “Definitely.”

  CHAPTER XXXII

  The two turned and fled, blindly taking a corner and pounding hard against the road beneath their feet. There was a voice calling for them to stop, but it only proved to spur them on faster. Without regard for the others now, they ran straight through the people who littered the road. At such a speed, Korinna barely noticed the frigid chill that would take her with every encounter, though at least one of the unlucky mortals cried out and tripped once she passed them by.

  Their pursuer was gaining on them, and her face had changed. It was feminine and angular, but the brow was much deeper, and the helmet had fallen away revealing coiled, black hair.

  Faster to keep up with Nikeros, she followed him as he took another corner, and then another sharp right through an open door and into one of the buildings. Inside, the humans seemed to be leisurely enjoying themselves, most sitting at over-sized tables on seats that were similarly quite large and cushioned with the smoothest of animal skins in colors Korinna had never seen in nature before. They skidded around a corner and ducked down beneath a table. The table blocked them from the large sheet of glass that lined the front of the building, but they were able to peer over it just to see their pursuer run past at top speed outside.

  “Who was that?” Korinna coughed as she tried to catch her breath, “How can she see us? And why did we run?”

  “That’s an Erinyes.” Nikeros stood and leaned out over the table to look after where the woman had disappeared. “They are tasked with keeping the natural order of the Underworld, and we are not the natural order.”

  “Ex—excuse me,” a voice from above Korinna’s head spoke. There were four people sitting around the table that she was hunched under, and all of their eyes were on her. “Do you need something?”

  Korinna gasped quietly, as if that might help. Could they see her? They all appeared frozen, staring back at her, but there was movement on the table from a vase that held cut asphodels. The flowers were crumbling away before her eyes, and they hadn’t even touched them.

  Then she felt Nikeros’s hands on her shoulders, and she was able to get to her feet. All four sets of eyes followed them.

  “Sir.” There was another voice cutting harshly though the air behind them, and they turned to see a plump woman, dressed in pink, her chiton stiff and wide in the skirt and tight and fitted around her ample chest, and frankly not a chiton at all, but Korinna had no idea what else to call it. She smacked her lips and cocked her head. “Not that some of us don’t appreciate it, honey, but you have to wear a shirt in here.” Nikeros glanced down at where she gestured, half of his chest left bare from his tunic. “A whole one.” Then she squinted at them. “You two headed to a costume party or something?”

  “I think they can see us now,” Korinna found her voice, a low hush as she tried to make herself a bit smaller.

  “Yup.” He backed toward the door, tucking his wings in a bit tighter. Now the entire patronage was staring at them. “Time to go.”

  They slipped out the door, a bell ringing as it shut them off from the patrons inside. On the street, people were finally noticing them. Some only gave them a second look with a twisted face, but others stopped and stared. Their gazes eventually looked passed Nikeros and Korinna and went far off into the distance as if they contemplated their entire life up to that point and came to the realization it had all been an elaborate illusion manufactured by a set of deities they had thought only exited in the minds of an ancient civilization, fallen long ago and touted as something called mythology.

  Hey, wait a second…

  No, no, don’t worry about it.

  Korinna and Nikeros weren’t running as they seemed to silently agree that would attract too much attention, but they were walking as fast as possible and keeping their heads down. “What does this mean?”

  “The asphodel,” he told her, guiding her around another corner and passed a window box full of decaying blooms. The people on the street were now parting for them, the looks on their faces changing from the pleasant smiles they typically wore to ones of perplexity, even fright. “It does something to them, but it seems like we might be counteracting it.”

  “Maybe this is good?” she hesitated, “We need to ask if anyone has seen the prince.”

  Nikeros made a worried sound in the back of his throat. It wasn’t exactly an answer, but it told Korinna everything she needed to know.

  They were sprinting now that the crowd had thinned, and they found themselves among significantly less populated streets away from the market. More identical little homes lined the road like when they had first found the place. Ahead, they caught sight of another Erinyes, dressed in blue, and speaking into a black box in her hand. The two ducked down another road amongst more buildings, this one narrower and devoid of any humans.

  Korinna tried catching her breath, a hand on her chest. “What do we do now?”

  “There must be a place where the veil is thin. A place where we can hide, where the asphodel doesn’t grow.”

  The flowers were in even greater abundan
ce here, clustered amongst the patches of green behind each building. They hurried off down the narrow path, leaving a trail of dead flowers in their wake.

  Then there was a screech from the air as if a hawk had spotted its prey, and they turned to see her, an Erinyes, but she’d been freed of her blue uniform. Instead, the material hung from her limbs in tatters, ripped away to make room for wings, massive and leathery, her skin gray. Her hair had gone even wilder, black and falling in long coils, and her eyes glowed a terrible, toxic yellow. Above them, she angled down for the two, dipping suddenly out of the air, and they jumped away to be narrowly missed by the Erinyes’s talons.

  With a shriek, Korinna rolled into a heavy patch of asphodel that turned to ash beneath her. This infuriated the creature, and she called out again, diving for Korinna. Just as she came down on the girl, the Erinyes was struck, her body thrown off course, and landed with a thud beside her. An arrow protruded from the Erinyes’s side, and, struggling, the creature growled as she reached for it.

  Korinna scrambled to her feet and ran toward Nikeros, his bow readied to loose another arrow, but she grabbed his arm as she passed, urging him to flee with her. At top speed they ran from the Erinyes’s grunting form as it staggered back up, and they found another narrow road to escape down.

  Korinna stopped. Nikeros skidded and turned when he realized she was no longer running by his side. He motioned for her to follow, but she could barely see him. Instead, all she could see was her. Shaking her head, Korinna changed course, veering off the road and taking Nikeros with her. She jumped over the low fence and landed in a patch of flowers that turned to dust around her feet. Just before the door shut, she grabbed it, wrenched it open, and fell inside, slamming it shut behind them.

  The woman screamed, the contents of the bag she’d been carrying littering the floor. Her face was a mask of horror. “Who are you? What do you want?”

  Korinna swallowed, her chest heaving. She wanted to say, but she shouldn’t have had to. Who was she? Of course, if anyone should know, she would.

  “I’m warning you…” The woman was backing away from them, trembling. She fumbled around behind herself, knocking over items with a clatter then suddenly brandishing a knife. “Don’t come any closer!”

  The space they’d entered was so strange, and to anyone else from Korinna’s time it would have been such a shock she would have been left speechless, but Korinna was not anyone else. “Don’t you recognize me?” Her eyes burned and her throat went hoarse, and she held out her hand. “Mother?”

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  The woman stood stiff as a statue while time stood still around them, or at least it felt that way. Time on Gaia was strange enough with Chronos locked away, but in The Asphodel Fields? Forget about it.

  Korinna’s mother placed the knife on a table beside her but did not remove her hand from it. She didn’t blink, but her eyes did dart to the far side of the room, and Korinna’s followed. A girl, small and doe-eyed, stood peeking around the edge of the wall. “Go upstairs,” she instructed in a dulcet but firm tone, and the child turned and fled from them. The three stood listening to each of her footsteps thundering up above their heads, every noise that much louder than it should have been, but loudest of all was Korinna’s own heart thumping in her chest.

  “Promise me you won’t hurt my daughter.” The woman’s voice had lost its shakiness, but her words struck Korinna so fully in her gut she almost fell to her knees. Her daughter.

  “We’re not here to hurt anyone,” Nikeros spoke when Korinna said nothing. She could feel his presence behind her and was suddenly able to gather her thoughts.

  “You don’t know who I am.” Korinna wasn’t asking this time.

  The woman looked her up and down then shook her head. Despite the drastically different clothes and the way she’d done her hair, her mother hadn’t changed, but then Korinna, of course, had. She was no longer six years old—the age of that same child she’d just seen—and it had been many, many years since then. Her mother was young still, too young to have an adult daughter, and she was living a very different life. Or rather, death.

  Before the tears could come, glass exploded around them. In a bloody crash, an Erinyes landed on the table with a garbled screech through the window. Korinna knew she should flee, but she could not leave.

  The Erinyes threw Nikeros’s now broken arrow down at their feet. “An Erote? And a living mortal?” her voice scratched out, “In the Meadows? What trickery is this?”

  “None!” Nikeros was quick to answer, “The judges allowed us to come!”

  “You’ll ruin everything,” she hissed and pointed at Korinna’s mother, “Look what you are doing?” The woman was shaking.

  Korinna’s heart hung heavy in her chest. The woman was terrified and confused, her whole world crumbling down around her, and for what?

  “We’re here on a mission from the gods,” the Erote stood as tall as he could, “We’re seeking out the lost soul of Prince Leon of Dorinth, struck down before his time.”

  The Erinyes squinted at them, curling a lip in disbelief. “Never heard of him.”

  “Well, perhaps not, but we’ve been trying to get to Hades.”

  “You’re already here.”

  “This naming convention is really rather lazy,” he sighed, “We seek out the god Hades. Then we will be on our way.”

  The Erinyes squawked out a high laugh then she leveled yellow eyes at them. “No mortal comes to the afterlife and leaves.”

  “That is not true.” Nikeros crossed his arms. Korinna had heard the stories, and though she’d never cared enough to remember the names, she was certain there were at least a few someones who’d gone and made it back. She glanced at Nikeros and his piercing gaze back at the woman. He was certain too.

  “Well,” the Erinyes balked, “I mean, I guess sometimes they do, but where’s your goat then?”

  “Our what?”

  “Goat. For the sacrifice.”

  “Oh, no, no, we don’t do that,” Korinna waved her hands, breaking in, “That’s like at the top of the list of things we don’t do.”

  “Fine.” She gestured to the woman who was still with her mouth hanging open, trembling in the presence of two too many winged beings. “You need to make an offering to the shades if you wish to talk to them.”

  Korinna narrowed her eyes. “I was talking to her until you butted in. Thanks so much for that, by the way.”

  “She doesn’t know who you are,” the Erinyes told her as if she were stupid, which was sort of fair given the situation. “The shades don’t know they’re dead, and things are much better around here if they stay unaware.”

  Korinna’s mother looked sidelong at the leathery-winged beast on her kitchen table.

  “Oh, right.” Korinna cleared her throat. “I guess that makes sense.”

  “If you want to speak to them—the real them—you have to give them something from the mortal world. The blood of one goat will allow you to speak to quite a few shades in their natural form. They’re actually quite observant and a bit all-knowing when they’re ghosties.” The Erinyes seemed to be proud of this fact, but then her shoulders drooped. “But gods do they get sad sometimes. Depressing to be around, really.”

  “They don’t seem so bad,” Nikeros offered.

  “Now they don’t, but that’s why we keep them like this.” The Erinyes pointed to the woman who was taking in ragged breaths with her eyes peeled wide. “Well, not like this, but you know. They get all new identities when they show up here. Of course, there are some things they long for, and we try to accommodate, but mostly they accept their new afterlives for the few hundred years we keep them.”

  “Then what happens?”

  “I dunno.” The Erinyes shrugged. “They die. And no one knows what happens in the after-afterlife.”

  Korinna’s mouth hung open, then she shut it, her eyes falling on her mother again. She was living a whole new life here. And she had been, up until just a few
minutes ago, happy. But now? “I have ruined everything.”

  Her mother finally staggered to a chair and dropped into it. The Erinyes hopped down from the table then and filled a glass with water that magically ran from a tap inside the room. She pushed it into the woman’s hands and urged it up to her lips. When the woman took a gulp, her eyes shut, and she smiled. After a second, they opened again, and she blinked around the room. “Who are you people? And what’s happened to my kitchen?”

  “Water from Lethe.” The Erinyes looked at them pointedly. “She’ll forget everything with time, but you certainly can’t stay here.”

  No, of course they couldn’t stay and continue horrifying this woman who had no memory of her.

  “I have this!” Korinna gasped, fumbling with her hair for the pin Hera had put there. It was simple and plain, but it had come from the goddess, after all, and even though she had no concept of the transaction rate of mortal items in the Underworld, it had to be worth something. She held it out, and the Erinyes snatched it.

  “Well, it’s not blood, but it will barter you a few minutes with the true form of one shade, and if that will get you out of here, then so be it.” Korinna nodded vigorously at her. “You said you are looking for someone specific, yes? For that, we should find an ancestor of this prince of yours. If he was granted entry to the Asphodel Meadows, he will have become part of that family.”

  Korinna bit her lip. She watched her mother, confused, take another sip. The last few minutes drained away from the woman, and a whole new confusion crawled across her face at the beings in her home. The woman stood and shrieked this time, and the Erinyes push her back down into her chair. Korinna turned to Nikeros, steeling herself. “All right, let’s go.”

  Nikeros glanced around Korinna’s form to look at the woman and the creature, then back to her. “No.”

  She huffed at him, hands on hips. “We have to find your brother.”