by S. L. Stacy
Alec hesitates, then repeats, “Out of here?”
“Well, yeah. We can’t just stay here…forever.” A chill that has nothing to do with the mountain air shoots through me. “This isn’t home.”
“Don’t you see? Wherever you are is my home. And anyway, I can’t go back there. They pretty much expelled me from the fraternity.”
“But what about your family? I’m sure they miss you terribly.”
“I know, and I miss them, too. I don’t want my family to hurt because of me. But there’s no going back, even if we could.” Alec takes my hand. “Let’s just stay here, Carly.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “My little sister needs me.”
“From what you told me, she’s having the time of her life at Princeton. She’ll be fine.”
“And my sorority sisters—they need me, too.”
“It’s just a sorority—”
“Not to me,” I say, standing up. “It’s my home. They’re my family.”
“I could be your family,” Alec implores, getting to his feet. “We’ll have each other. We can build a life together here.” He reaches for me. I take a reflexive step backwards.
“No.”
Alec’s mouth is set in a stiff, stubborn line. “I can’t go back. I’m staying here.”
“Stay here, if that’s what you really want, but I can’t. I love you, Alec, but I can’t.”
Looking past me at the gray sky, Alec’s shoulders slump as though he’s finally accepted my decision. He gives a short, incredulous laugh. “Suit yourself.”
I bite my lower lip. Something is bothering me—something besides Alec’s abrupt indifference. It’s like a fleeting scent on the wind I can’t quite identify. What did Alec say? But there’s no going back, even if we could…
Then, I see the prince curled up on the floor again, sobbing. There’s nothing we can do. No way. No way out.
“What did you mean by that?” I wonder. The space between Alec’s eyebrows knots. “What did you mean, ‘there’s no going back, even if we could’? How do you know that?”
Alec opens his mouth to reply, but he’s already slipping away from me. Or maybe I’m the one slipping away from him. In any case, everything around us is retreating, too—the smooth floor of the plateau, the flickering fire, the imperious mountains, the bleak sky—everything is spinning again, coming apart, dissolving into nothingness…
***
I’m standing in the throne room.
I blink rapidly as my eyes adjust to the darkness. I see the marble floor, the rough stone walls, the undulating flames of the candelabras. I see him slumped in the throne on the other side of the room, a petulant frown on his golden face.
“I won.” I whisper it out loud as the realization comes to me. I couldn’t contain the grin spreading on my face even if I wanted to. “I won!” I shout the words this time, letting them echo joyously around the room.
“Congratulations,” the prince says acidly. “You’ve won a three night stay on Olympus at a resort of your choice.” He hops to his feet and swaggers toward me. “And a new car. And a million dollars!”
“Oh, shut up,” I snap, walking forward to meet him halfway. “I know what I won. My freedom. You have to let me go now.”
He snickers. “I have to do no such thing.”
My heart gives a nervous stutter. “You said that if I passed all three tests, you would let me go. You promised.”
“Oh, dear.” He brings a hand to his mouth. “I get it now. I see why you’re confused. You thought that, if you won, you would get to leave this place.”
“But that’s exactly what you said!” I shriek in protest as my heart sinks into my stomach.
“No,” he insists, shaking his head gravely. “Oh, no, no, no. I said if you passed all three tests, you would be free of me. I would leave you alone. Not that I would let you go.”
“But…why…what…” I sputter. “How was I supposed to know that’s what that meant?”
“I thought I was making myself pretty clear—”
“No, you weren’t! You knew how I would interpret it—you tricked me! You said I would be free. Free!”
“Of me.”
“That could have meant anything! For all I knew, you just liked rhyming things!” Hot tears pour down my face. “I don’t care what you meant or what you thought you were telling me. You have to let me go—”
“Carly—wait,” he sighs, hanging his head. “You don’t understand. I can explain—”
“I don’t want to hear it! You have to let me go! You have to! Let me—”
“I can’t!” he yells over me. Both of our mouths snap closed, the echoes of our screams fading into the emptiness around us. “I…I can’t.”
“You can’t, or you won’t?”
“I can’t. I promise you. I can’t.”
“But wh—”
“Because I’m a prisoner here, myself.”
Part Three
Compulsion
“Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
‘Come buy our orchard fruits
Come buy, come buy.’”
–Christina Rossetti, Goblin Market
Chapter 22
“I don’t understand.” After a few minutes of silence, this is all I come up with.
“We’re both trapped here, Carly,” he says, giving the room a dismissive wave. “And it’s much easier getting in than it is getting out.”
“So we’re not on Olympus.” He shakes his head. “Then where the fudge are we?”
“We’re trapped in the space between your universe and mine. There’s absolutely nothing here—well, except for you and me, of course.”
“But…what about my unicorn?”
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s what you’re worried about?”
I cross my arms. “What about the meadow, and the village, and the mountains?” I continue. “What about Otto and all of the villagers?”
A subtle pink blush creeps up his neck and face. He turns and saunters away from me. “They were part of a sort of…simulation. A complex illusion I created using my memories of Olympus. And some of your memories.”
I instinctively look down at my dress. It’s clean and sparkly, just like it was the night of the Sigma Iota party. I think back to the miles and miles I walked in the hot sun. Over dirt and biting twigs and rocks. My aching body. The hopelessness I felt as I agonized over which door to pick, over how to get across the Burning Chasm. The pain that tore through my heart when Alec asked me to stay, and I had to tell him no. How betrayed I felt when I realized the young man in the village was just a disguise—a trick. All of it was an elaborate trick. “None of it was real. It was all in my head.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”
“Whatever you say, Dumbledore.” I jog over to where he’s wandered all the way back to his throne—which I’m guessing isn’t really here, either. “So you’re not a prince.” Another grim head shake. “Then who are you?”
His back shrugs. “No one.” The simple phrase is uttered with such anguish. He must have been the Greek’s god of angst.
“At least tell me why you lied.”
He whirls around and stomps his foot. “I did not lie.”
“You lied about everything!”
“I asked you if you wanted to play a game,” he says, prowling toward me. A sinister green fire combusts in his eyes. “I never said we were on Olympus. I never even said I was a prince!”
“Otto said you were! He called you ‘Your Highness!’”
“Otto is a character I made up, and yes, I like to think I’m the ruler of my own mind. I showed you my imaginary world, my creation, but you chose not to see through it. You chose to believe it.” His laugh is cold and cruel. “You’re really rather gullible.”
It’s my turn to blush. “I didn’t believe all of it. I figured out that Alec wasn’t real.” I recall sitting down in the forest and pricking my thumb with a s
plinter of wood. Even then I suspected something, but the puncture burned as warm blood bubbled out of it. The illusion was finely tuned, down to every last speck of dirt on the ground. There’s no way anyone would have been able to tell the difference between it and reality. “Just tell me why. Why would you do this to me?”
“I was trying to distract us.”
“From what?”
“From this.”
The marble floor is pulled out from underneath me. The candlelit room vanishes. All that’s left is a perpetually dark, airless void—just like the one in my dream. Here, there is no up or down, left or right, back or forth. There is no time. There is only suffocation, thirst and hunger. And awareness.
The awareness is the worst. You are still cognizant of your existence, that you’re suspended in this never-ending abyss, but there’s nothing you can do about it. I remember reading an article for my medical ethics elective last year about locked-in syndrome—a condition in which a patient is awake and aware but paralyzed everywhere. They can’t move or communicate. I wondered what that would be like—to be trapped inside your own mind.
Now I know.
Just as abruptly as it fell away, the illusion settles back into place. There’s a floor under my feet again, giving me the perception of down and up. There’s texture in the stony walls, contrasts of light and dark. The air is cold and musty. I can breathe again.
“You see how much fun that was,” he says. “So, really, you should be grateful I’m here to ‘lie’ to you.”
“Assuming this is the illusion,” I say, looking around the room. He regards me quizzically. “If you are capable of producing such complex illusions—and I think that much is true—how do I know that what you just showed me is what’s real? Maybe you’re deceiving me again so you don’t have to let me go. Maybe you’re not a prisoner at all.”
His nostrils flare as he contemplates this. “I hadn’t thought of that.” He stares off into space, stroking his chin. Several beats later, he holds up his pointer finger. “I know! You can prove it to yourself. Everything you need to know is in there.” He points to my head. “You just have to remember me.”
“We’ve met before?” I ask doubtfully.
“No, but you know who I am. You’ll figure it out—I know you will. Think of it as your fourth and final test.”
“Just what I wanted. Can’t wait to find out what I get this time.”
“The satisfaction of knowing you won,” he sneers, hands on hips. “And…the knowledge that it’s the truth. I know you don’t believe me. So believe in yourself. Just take some time and think about it. Try to remember.”
“Well…okay,” I give in, sitting on the floor with my back against the wall. I pull my knees into my chest and rest my chin on them. It’s a good thing I have forever to think about this.
Because I have no fudging clue who this guy is.
***
What feels like hours later—but who can tell—I’m still sitting on the floor staring across the room at him.
He must feel my eyes on him, but he gives no indication as he watches the shadows his imaginary candelabras cast along the stone. He sits with one side of his body curled against the wall, so I can only see one half of his face—one angular cheekbone, one predatory green eye. It peers out between a few loose sprigs of platinum blonde hair.
I shut my eyes and rack my brain. There must be some reason he thinks I should know who he is. Assuming he’s telling the truth—that we really are being held captive in the space between universes. Given that everything up to this point may have been a trick, I have no reason to start believing him now. Except that I don’t have many options. It’s not like I’ve figured out a way out of here yet. He’s right about one thing: If there is a way out, it isn’t easy.
A gravelly droning sound pricks my ears. I open an eye to find my fellow prisoner tapping his foot, making a low, off-key noise in his throat.
I wince, covering my ears. “Stop that!”
He clears his throat. “Sor-ry. I thought humans liked music.”
“That wasn’t music. That sounded like a dying animal.”
“You could say it nicely,” he grumbles, pouting. “I can’t show you any illusions. I can’t hum. What am I allowed to do? I’m bored.”
I sigh. “That makes two of us.” I almost miss the simulation of Olympus. At least there were people to talk to, places to explore. At least I wasn’t stuck in this one room, with this one other person—this fickle being who’s currently fidgeting like he’s about to spontaneously combust.
“But I’m bored,” he says again like I haven’t said anything. “I’m so bored!”
“I have a game we could play,” I tell him. His body goes still as he perks up attentively. “It’s called the Quiet Game. We see who can be quiet for the longest. Ready? Go.”
A few blissful moments of silence tick by.
“I don’t like this game,” he says. “It’s stupid.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re stupid.”
“You know what? I liked you at first, Carly, but you’re starting to get on my nerves. If I could let you out of here, I would, in a heartbeat. I was better off alone. You’re kind of annoying.”
“I’m annoying?” I snap, getting to my feet. “I’m annoying? All you’ve done since I got here is pop in and out whenever you feel like it and invade my personal space!”
“Like I’m doing now? From all the way over here?”
I start pacing back and forth, counting every tiny scratch on the marble floor I can find. His attention to detail in these illusions is disconcerting. I’m trapped in an inescapable nightmare with a madman. This is hell.
A soft oomph of air rushes out of me as I collide with something cold and sturdy.
“We don’t have to stay here,” he reminds me. He stands with his legs spread and his arms crossed, barring my way. “Just say the word, and I’ll show you whatever you like. An Olympian beach?”
“Ouch!” I shriek, hopping up and down on the hot sand that has appeared beneath my feet. I run toward the cool-looking, foamy white waves pushing up against the beach.
“Or maybe you’d prefer a walk on one of our moons.”
Just as my toes kiss the soothing waves, the beach vanishes, replaced by a gray, rocky lunar landscape.
“Or how about the inside of my old bedroom?”
I blink, only to find myself lying down on a monstrous bed, sinking into black satin sheets.
“Yes, I think this will do,” he says from the other side of the bed, lifting himself up on one of his elbows to look over at me. “I can think of an infinite number of things we could do in here. We’d never get bored.”
“No, thanks.” I say it even as I’m relishing the feel of the pliable mattress and the warm, silky sheets.
“Suit yourself.” He plunks us back in the throne room. His leather pants squeak as he walks back to his spot and sits down. “Just don’t tell me you’re ‘bored’ later.”
“I won’t.”
“Good.”
He resumes staring into space, and I pick up my patrol, this time studying the walls and ceiling. Trying to find a crack where maybe his illusion doesn’t reach—a disturbance in the façade that’s really a way out of this place. Or maybe a door with a neon red exit sign. I know, deep down, that a tiny fissure isn’t going to show me the way out of here. We need “magic” words and powerful objects to open a portal from here to Earth or Olympus. I certainly don’t know of any rituals besides the Guardian Ceremony, and—if he’s not lying about being trapped here—neither does he, or he’d have gotten out a long time ago.
I look back over at him. His eyes are closed now, his chest rising and falling peacefully. He looks almost boyish, innocent—not like a “master of darkness, blood and carnage” at all. He might be mischievous and arrogant, but I’m starting to see that he’s a lot of talk—he’s basically harmless. The ritual couldn’t have been talking about him. Now that I think about it, it was probably a d
edication to Ares.
So maybe my great Olympus adventure was all in my head. We really are trapped between universes, and he really is a fellow victim in all of this.
But with the Olympians, it’s always hard to tell. Siobhan thought Jasper had returned for her, and that certainly turned out to be a big fat lie. Then again, it’s not like he lied about everything. Like his feelings for her. So I can’t say he was completely bad, either. Just like our house mother Farrah—one of the “good guys”—used Siobhan to trap Jasper so we could send him back.
I slide my back against the wall as I sit down, putting my head in my hands. I still feel awful about that whole ceremony. Victoria said we did the right thing, but my stomach does a sick flop every time I think about it. I should have known something was up when I saw Farrah talking to that girl—the one with long black hair and brilliant green eyes. The one I saw among Jasper’s followers at our formal. Nothing good ever comes out of striking a deal with your enemy.
I remember coming downstairs just as she emerged from Farrah’s room. Something told me to wait, so I flattened myself against the wall, staying to the shadows, until she left.
“Thank you for your help, Apate,” Farrah had said. “You’re doing the right thing. And we’ll keep our end of the bargain. It may take a little time, but—”
“You’d better,” Apate had cut her off. “Or else.” She had hesitated at the front door, her eyes flashing to my hiding spot on the stairs. She had known I was there. And those eyes…shining like two precious stones, more vivid than any human’s, and somehow vicious and vulnerable at the same time…
My “cellmate” is still pretending to doze. I walk over, crouch beside him and shake his shoulder. The corners of his mouth curl into an impish grin, and he opens his eyes.
“I see you’re finally taking me up on my offer,” he says.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I say, not very firmly.
He looks inconvenienced. “Then why did you wake me up?” He starts to close his eyes again. They fly back open when I put my hand against his cheek.
“Wait,” I tell him. “Let me see you.”