The Tanglewood Witches

by Genevieve Jack

  She snorted.

  “I admit that I knew you thought I was an archon and did not correct your misconception. I apologize for that.”

  She glared at him out of the corner of her eye. “How big of you.”

  “But you should admit that, had you known the truth about me, you would never have spent time with me. You, Alena, are an elitist.”

  She scoffed in denial, but internally the accusation made her pause. It had all started with his hair—his beautiful, natural hair. That’s what had caught her attention on the ship. Very few men wore their hair the way he did. Most shaved to keep vermin at bay. His hair was his own, not a wig. She’d thought he must be a man of wealth and importance to have kept his own hair. Hers was natural as well, but she had magic to thank for that. It had never occurred to her that his might be the product of magic as well. The dark waves had been and still were a delight and fascination to her.

  So when three crew members had suggested his wealth came from his station as a magistrate of Athens, an archon, she’d believed it. He’d captivated her with his Greek complexion and fine garb, and they’d talked late into the night for the entire voyage.

  “It was humiliating.” She remembered the way the old women had looked at her when she’d admitted who she thought he was. They’d corrected her in the most public way and made her feel like a harlot for arriving to the feast on his arm. “I might have given you a chance if I’d known the truth.” But even as she said it, she knew it was a lie. New to Alexandria, she’d wanted to get to know people who could help her position, not cut her hair.

  “Hmm. I’m sorry you were embarrassed, and I should have told you the truth about my occupation, but nothing else was a lie. What I told you about my father was true—he did not agree with me leaving Athens. He thought my coming to Egypt was a sin. And what you told me about your mother’s death—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He placed his hand on her shoulder and, with his other, swept her into his arms.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I wasn’t using you, Alena. And as for your comment when we were in the stone room about the other woman you saw coming out of my abode, I have not and will never be interested in her. She loiters around my shop. That is all. I haven’t stopped thinking about you since the moment I met you on that fated vessel. As for the feast, I would have told you the truth if those ancient biddies hadn’t poisoned you against me. I allowed the rumor that I was an archon to persist because it was a distraction, an explanation for my wealth that kept my magic a secret. If you’d only forgive me—”

  “What? What would happen if I forgave you?” She searched his face. There was so much there in his expression, so much pain and longing. He was sorry; she could tell that with certainty. And his regret seemed genuine. But could she trust his intentions were pure?

  Before she could take another breath, he kissed her. At first her body stiffened in resistance to the unexpected affection. She arched against his arm in a half-hearted attempt to pull away. But the longer his lips pressed against hers, the more impossible it became to fight the kiss. She tilted her head and trailed her fingers up his neck, threading them into the hair behind his ears. Parting her lips, she let him in. Into her mouth, into her heart again.

  The kiss ignited a delicious heat that traveled from her lips to her toes. It warmed her and wooed her. She’d spent many long nights cursing Orpheus as a liar and scoundrel, but this kiss didn’t lie. She found it impossible to maintain the walls she’d erected against him. It was too difficult. Chances were that her life would end today or tomorrow. She didn’t have the energy to waste on hating him any longer. Not when his touch made her heart beat for what seemed like the first time since the last time they’d kissed.

  He made a distinctly male sound deep in his chest that rumbled against hers. She sighed into his mouth as he gently pulled away. Their eyes met, his that deep, arresting blue that always hastened her pulse. She wondered how he’d describe hers. They were also blue, although lighter than his, just like her father’s. Her aunt had once said she had ghost eyes. The woman had found them eerie against her pale skin and midnight-black hair. If he thought them strange, Orpheus didn’t say so. There was nothing but desire in his expression.

  “I forgive you.”

  “All it took was a kiss?” he said softly. “I would have done that sooner had I known and if I could have gotten close enough to you.” His large hands stroked along her waist, and he lowered his forehead to rest against hers.

  “I suppose you needed only to offer me a ride across town on your back.”

  “The secret to the heart.”

  Her gaze dropped to the pathway. “I don’t want to spend my last hours on earth hating you. And, honestly, if we ever get out of this alive, I want to kiss you like that for many hours.”

  “Hours…,” he repeated, his lips brushing her cheek. “Indeed, I could kiss you for hours.”

  Lightning cracked across the sky, and they both looked up.

  “A warning from the gods.” He scowled.

  She released him and turned back toward the wall. “There’s only one way we’re getting out of this alive. We have to find that grimoire and bring it to Cleopatra.”

  Chapter Six

  Orpheus tried to understand what had just happened. When he’d kissed Alena, a piece of his heart had somehow passed through his throat to his lips and into her, and now it was walking away from him, sashaying toward an ominous door in a wall that looked to be constructed out of solid stone by the gods themselves.

  It made him nervous. He respected Alena and found himself disconcertingly invested in the welfare of the sorceress. He needed more time. Time to woo her. To worship her. To wed her, if that’s where this was going. The wall was a reminder that their time was short. She was right though: the only way out was to face what was ahead of them. They must find the grimoire.

  “Wait,” he called. He caught up to her before she could try the door. “It could be dangerous.”

  “I’m sure it is dangerous, but the path leads here. This is where we must go.” Without hesitation, she pushed against the door and groaned. “It’s locked.”

  He shook his head, beguiled by her bravery and determination. He desperately hoped that tenacity wouldn’t cross into foolishness. He took a closer look at the door, running his hands along the edges. “It’s not locked. It’s a false entrance. Look here. There are no hinges. This is solid stone only carved to look like a door.”

  “How do we get inside?”

  “There are symbols here.” The way the door was designed, Orpheus had to stand with his back against it to read the strange markings on his right and left. He reached out and placed his fingers on the symbols on either side of his body.

  “Orpheus!”

  Alena’s scream cut off, and he was transported to the other side of the wall, to a strange interior room lit by burning torches. “Alena? Put your hands against—”

  She arrived where he had, right in front of him. “The tricks you teach me,” she said around a smile.

  He shook his head and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’d like to teach you a few more.”

  “How about teaching me what this place is and what we’re supposed to do next?”

  Orpheus scratched the back of his head and took a closer look at his surroundings. There was nothing here but a couple of torches and a dark, narrow entrance that led to the gods knew where.

  “Only one possibility.” He pointed toward a dark doorway.

  Alena removed a torch from the wall and handed it to him. “Might as well be able to see what’s going to kill us.” She took a second torch for herself.

  Orpheus led the way. The narrow corridor stretched on until they reached a fork. “Left or right?”

  Alena stared at the symbols in the stone for a moment. “Left is marked by the symbol for the underworld, right by the symbol for the god of war.

  “How do you know that
? These symbols are gibberish to me.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. The symbols aren’t anything I’ve ever seen, but I can understand them.”

  “Another gift from your ancestors?”

  “Maybe.”

  “So which way do we go?” Orpheus held his torch in the entrance to the left passageway.

  Nothing, although the smooth stone corridor soon became jagged with rubble. It appeared as if the walls themselves were crumbling. That might be hard to navigate.

  He swung his torch around and pointed it toward the right. A skeleton dangled from the far wall, held in place by an arrow through the skull and what remained of decaying flesh. Another skeleton was propped in the corner, its lower jaw open in an eternal scream.

  “Left,” he said. “This may come as a surprise to you, but I’m a magician, not a warrior. Considering I don’t have a weapon aside from this torch, our chances of survival seem better in the land of the dead.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard at the sight of the skeleton. “Agreed. I don’t know the first thing about fighting. Death we may have a chance against.”

  She raised her torch and turned left. They picked their way through the fallen stones as the pathway turned and descended.

  “What do you know about the underworld?” Orpheus asked.

  “It depends. The Egyptian concept of the underworld is called Duat, and it is a place where souls are judged by Osiris and either given a peaceful afterlife or destroyed.”

  “I’m beginning to think we should have gone right.”

  “I don’t think this place is ruled by Egyptian gods. So far everything we’ve faced has aligned more closely with the Greek gods than the Egyptian ones.”

  “The sphinx is Egyptian.”

  “In Egypt, they believe the sphinx to be benevolent. Only the Greek sphinx tells riddles and kills as the one we faced did.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I never knew.”

  “Also, the cursed stream. That’s very like Athena. She would know who my mother was and take pride in transforming me into an ass if I had fallen for it. Now we’re in a labyrinth leading to the underworld. I have a feeling this is Hades’s doing.”

  “Athena and Hades are Greek gods. Why would Greek gods be protecting a secret grimoire that was promised to Cleopatra by the Egyptian gods?”

  “I have no idea. Although, Cleopatra’s ancestors were originally from Macedonia. She is Greek. She thought the golden peacock represented the Eye of Horus, but what if that was a misinterpretation?”

  “If it is, it explains why we, two Greek sorcerers, have been successful where Cleopatra’s priests were not.”

  The passage narrowed, and the air grew close and hot. Orpheus had to walk sideways to fit his shoulders through and held the torch in front of him as if the fire could scare away the dark feeling that had permeated his bones.

  “Before this, have you ever thought the gods were testing you?”

  He glanced back at Alena, her pale blue eyes twinkling at him in the firelight. “A few times.”

  “Tell me.”

  He cleared his throat, thinking about where to begin. “When I was seven, I was tending our sheep for my father. My mother was ill, and he needed to see to her. He didn’t normally leave me with the sheep, so I was nervous, afraid I wouldn’t do a good job. Sure enough, one of my charges became entangled inside some brambles on the side of the mountain. If the lamb freed itself, it would likely fall to its death. If it stayed where it was, I needed to find a way to rescue it.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I knew I was different by that point. My father used to call me blessed. He’d told me about Medea, and I knew my power was somehow linked with my voice. But I didn’t know what to do. And then I had the strongest feeling that someone was watching me. Judging me. That it was a test by the gods to see if I was worthy of my power. So I sang. I sang and watched the sheep free itself and climb up the side of the mountain to me. And when it was finally in my arms, I could have sworn I saw a man fly toward the heavens, wearing winged shoes.”

  Alena grinned. “Hermes!”

  He nodded, reached another fork in the labyrinth, and after checking with her, led her left. “When I was sixteen, my mother died.” He heard her inhale sharply. “My father built a funeral pyre, and we watched her body burn. I got the same feeling, standing next to my father as her body went up in smoke. I was being watched. Watched and judged.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sang, and the animals did too. Crickets chirped, birds sang, dogs howled. It was sad and wonderful. It scared my father a little. It’s not often you see animals sing for the dead. And when I was done, I saw a woman watching me, a glowing woman as bright as a star, with an owl on her shoulder.”

  “Athena?”

  “I believe so.” He glanced back at her again, seeking out her gaze. “The night I first kissed you, something similar happened.”

  For a moment their eyes locked, and then he slowly turned his attention back to the labyrinth.

  Her voice broke when she spoke next. “What did you see after we, um…?”

  “Nothing but a soft rustle and an abandoned golden arrow.”

  “Eros,” she whispered.

  “Maybe.” He turned the corner. “There’s something here. The labyrinth is opening up.” He breathed a sigh of relief.

  A cold blast gusted through the corridor, extinguishing their torches. Alena made a strangled sound deep in her throat.

  “There’s a light up ahead,” he said to comfort her.

  When they emerged from the passageway, his eyes adjusted to the strange ambient light of the cavernous space. The silver sky had been replaced with a red glow from the ceiling that tinged everything the color of blood. He shivered, accepting that they must move forward but terrified of what challenges the red chamber held in store. The rocky floor of the corridor gradually blended into sand under his feet, and he realized he was standing at the edge of dark water that stretched like glass beyond the edge of a crimson beach. The path they were on led directly to the shore.

  “Are we supposed to swim?” Alena asked from behind him.

  “I think that would be a very bad idea.” Orpheus pointed across the water.

  A dark figure flowed toward them, robes floating eerily in the now windless cavern, skeletal hands rowing the paddle.

  “You said that symbol in the labyrinth signified the underworld… I think this is the river Styx.”

  Chapter Seven

  The deathly figure Alena recognized as Charon steered his boat next to the dark shore, and she suppressed a strong desire to run and hide. She’d read about this creature who rowed travelers along the river Styx for a fee. The way the path ended at the water’s edge, it was clear the only way to keep searching for the grimoire was to travel on his boat.

  Bony fingers extended from the tattered sleeves of his obsidian robe and turned upward, flexing imploringly.

  “He requires payment.”

  Orpheus’s shoulders slumped. “I can’t sing us out of this one. Tell me you have a couple obols in that bag of yours.”

  She shook her head. “No, but maybe…”

  Scanning the beach, Alena’s eyes landed on a circular shape protruding from the sand. Abandoning her extinguished torch on the beach, she turned her back to Charon and used her toe to dig a sand dollar from the sand. She returned to Orpheus with the disk-shaped creature cupped in her hands between them. “It’s close to the size and shape of a drachma. Here goes nothing.”

  “Wait. You should kiss me first.”

  She raised her face to his. He was warm and alive, a comfort among their dark and deadly surroundings. “What? Why?”

  “For luck.” His eyes flashed. “And because I want you to kiss me again before I die. Do it now before you have time to think yourself out of it.”

  They were close, his breath mingling with hers. His dark beauty made her insides tingle. What did she have to lose? There were no whis
pering women here. No one to see. She couldn’t resist. She rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.

  His fingers tangled in her hair and he said into her mouth, “You can do this. I believe in you.”

  “Metamórfosi,” she whispered, concentrating on the sand dollar. The animal turned cold in her hand. She looked down to find one silver drachma in her palm, more than enough to pay Charon’s fare.

  Orpheus ran his thumbs along her jaw. “Brilliant. I knew it. I knew the first moment I met you.”

  She pulled back, the muscles around her mouth tightening. What did that mean? Was he only interested in her for her power? He seemed to notice her mood shift and his eyes darkened.

  “I knew the moment I met you that you were cunning and talented. Does this upset you?”

  She looked away as her face grew hot.

  He sighed heavily. “How long will the transformation last?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never done it before.”

  “Then we’d better go.”

  She glanced between the drachma and the boat. “Yes.”

  At first he didn’t move. Neither of them did. They stood there, staring at one another as if they were assessing a new statue in the temple. But then Orpheus grabbed her hand and led her to Charon, where she placed the coin into the skeleton’s waiting palm.

  The spectral figure gestured for them to climb on board. Alena cringed as she slipped through the cold aura of Charon’s presence to get to the front of the boat. But once the warmth of Orpheus’s body was beside her and he wrapped his steadying arm around her shoulders, she could almost forget their harrowing circumstances. She leaned into his side, trying her best to absorb his heat, and he placed a tender kiss on her temple.

  “Thank you,” she mumbled.

  He gave her a small nod. Slowly the boat began to move.

  Alena stared at the water, at the strange pale plants that wavered under the surface as Charon’s boat passed. “Are those…?”

  Faces stared up at her, pale, decaying corpses locked into a weedy eternity. She swallowed the scream that built in her throat.