Immortal's Spring (The Chrysomelia Stories)

by Molly Ringle

  “They’re having a nice visit down there,” Adrian said.

  “Good,” Zoe said. “We’re headed back down.”

  Sophie looked down at Rosie and stroked the bristly patch of fur growing back where the dog had been burned.

  “I want to take the ladder.” Liam sprinted forward.

  “Slow down,” Sophie called.

  “Woot!” Liam hooked a safety harness around his waist, then grabbed the tops of the rope ladder and swung himself into the hole.

  “Goddess almighty,” Zoe muttered. “I’ll go with him.” She raced after Liam. “Wait up! Jeez, mate, careful.”

  Since a couple of mortals had moved into the Underworld for the time being, and couldn’t safely handle spirit horses, Adrian and Zoe had rigged up a rope ladder that dropped into the entrance cavern to allow Sophie and Liam to get in and out when they liked. Liam loved it, but a hundred-foot climb or descent on a rope ladder was not Sophie’s idea of fun, even with the harnesses to protect against falls. Today Zoe had brought her up on a horse while Liam climbed the ladder.

  But now Zoe was taking the ladder down, so Sophie had to decide: face the grapple on swaying ropes, or accept a lift in Adrian’s arms?

  He did have a spirit horse saddled and ready. Probably he’d been out for a ride. Sophie followed him to the cave mouth where the souls flowed in. She watched the rope ladder twitch as Liam and Zoe descended it. After a minute Liam’s voice echoed upward, calling something. Zoe called back, “Almost down. I’m not as fast on this as you.”

  Her brother and Zoe and Tabitha managed to be cheerful, even if they were faking it. Sophie couldn’t even fake it. She was faring the worst by far of everyone.

  Maybe she only needed to try harder. Baby steps.

  She looked at Adrian. “Can I ride down with you?”

  In his glance she caught a flash of hope before he smoothed his face into impassivity again. “Sure.” He untied the horse’s reins, and clicked his tongue to the dogs. “Here, girls.”

  He had lately built a small open cage, a roofless box of metal bars. It was all wrapped about with cables that met in a carabiner, which he clipped to the horse tack. Kiri trotted over and hopped into the box. Sophie gathered up Rosie’s stiff wriggling legs, and fit her into the box next to Kiri.

  “Dogs all set?” Adrian asked.

  “Yes.”

  Adrian stepped aside to let Sophie mount the horse, which she did easily enough, even on an intangible horse: foot in the stirrup, hands gripping the saddle, and a quick swing up. She had ridden the neighbor’s horses in Carnation lots of times.

  Back when she had a life in Carnation. Back when her parents were alive.

  Panic spread in her stomach.

  Adrian climbed on behind her and took the reins. His arms touched her on both sides, caging her in, though he didn’t actually embrace her. She clung to the saddle’s pads and buckles while the horse rose into the air. To keep the panic at bay, Sophie watched the rope go taut as it lifted the dogs’ metal carrier off the ground. They dangled just below Sophie’s and Adrian’s feet, safe in their box, untouched by the swimming ghost legs of the horse.

  Adrian gave the reins some slack, and the horse succumbed to the Underworld’s pull. They plummeted into the cave. Sophie closed her eyes.

  It took only a few seconds, then they landed, the dog carrier settling first and the horse on its spirit feet afterward. Sophie slid off and took a deep breath of the cave air. Its wet rock smell and the sound of the babbling river calmed her a bit. They had never changed in thousands of years, and likely wouldn’t for thousands more.

  In that moment of reassurance, she pushed forward with her attempt at baby steps. Face this trigger. Face your lover. When Adrian turned after helping the dogs out of their box, she stepped up and slipped her arms around his neck. She set her forehead against his shoulder and breathed in, though his scent threw her deeper into anxiety instead of comfort.

  He embraced her, hands tentative against her back. Then his arms closed tighter around her. One hand slid up into her hair, and he turned his face to the side of her head and inhaled. Though he didn’t speak, he managed to make merely that breath express both anguish and relief. After all, she hadn’t let him hold her like this since…before.

  She lifted her chin and kissed him. Given all they’d done in the past, this seemed like it should only count as a baby step too. Adrian’s mouth barely moved in response, as if he were being careful not to break her.

  But despite his gentleness, she tasted acrid smoke on his lips, a phantom scent filled in by her mind. In a flash of memory, he leaped at her and knocked her down while her house exploded. Her parents’ bodies lay on the winter grass before her while flames roared in the wreckage of their house, and the horrible red-haired woman electrocuted her over and over, and Adrian lay beside a different fire with a bullet hole in his forehead and blood down his scalp.

  Sophie tore loose and spun away, sure she was about to throw up. She crashed to her knees and hung her head, hands splayed on the stone floor. She took careful breaths.

  No sound came from behind her for several seconds. Then one of the dogs whined, and a collar tag jingled as the dog padded closer. Rosie. Kiri didn’t wear a collar. Rosie nosed Sophie’s ear, then sat beside her and rested her chin on Sophie’s hunched back. The comforting contact eased Sophie back to the point where at least she felt she wouldn’t vomit right now. With a sigh, she sat back on her knees, shaking. Rosie slid her front legs down and rested her chin on Sophie’s thigh instead.

  The bright blue-white of the cave mouth pierced Sophie’s eyes in the gloom. The incoming souls flickered against the stalactites and the river. Just eleven days ago, her parents had been among them, two of the hundreds who entered every minute.

  “You don’t have to pretend everything’s normal.” Adrian’s voice was husky, unsteady. “It isn’t. I know that. Please take your time.”

  “I’m pathetic.” She blinked at the brightness above. “With your mom you had it so much worse. You couldn’t come see her. You didn’t know about this place. She was just gone to you, and you thought you’d never see her again. I shouldn’t complain, when I have this.”

  Anger swept into his tone. “Of course you can complain. Those bastards attacked you and your home and destroyed everything they could touch. You’ve been violated, horribly. My mum wasn’t the victim of murder like that. Her death was natural, or at least an accident. It was horrible and sad, yes, and I…” His voice became gravelly, and he turned quiet a few seconds before continuing. “I would have done anything to keep you from going through that. I tried.”

  Her knees hurt against the stone. She stayed put. “I know.”

  All this horror had been brought on because of her association with him. She should have just said no to him, back in September. Everyone would still be alive if she had.

  “Blame me if you like,” he said. “I should never have approached you, with people like that on my tail. But don’t ever blame yourself. Please.”

  Not an option. Guilt rode her constantly.

  The colors changed upon a stalactite as the souls passed it. She envied them. If a painless method existed to end her life without grieving Liam or anyone else, she would take it. Oh, to acquire the serenity of the dead, and to abandon the aches and queasiness and vulnerability of this physical body.

  Because becoming immortal wouldn’t fix things either. Adrian was thoroughly wretched. And these days Zoe and even Nikolaos wandered around looking haunted and damaged a lot of the time, too. Tab seemed optimistic enough, but Tab was good at acting; it could have been a ruse. There was no escape from pain but death. And even death was only a temporary reprieve, since no one stayed in the fields forever. They just kept getting reborn, undergoing the torture of life again and again. What was the point of it all?

  “Tell me what I can do,” Adrian said. “Anything.”

  She rested her hand on Rosie’s head and stroked the rumpled skin behind the
dog’s ears. “Keep trying to fix the world.”

  “I’d rather fix you.”

  She slid her fingers back and forth beneath Rosie’s collar. “I don’t know how to do that.” After all, she’d tried some of those baby steps just now. Epic fail.

  “Are you ready to come see everyone?” Adrian asked quietly.

  “In a minute.”

  “I’ll wait by the raft.”

  He and Kiri departed, their footsteps a whisper on the stone.

  Chapter Five

  Hekate sat on the cliff above the Underworld. The rising moon hovered resplendent above the sea. The third full moon since her parents’ death, and still she could not pull a sliver of magic from it. But even remote and untouchable, it soothed her the way it did all humans, with its beauty, its light, its reliably cycling nature.

  Dionysos approached, climbing the rocks to her. She sensed him before she heard him. At least she still had that power. She remained equal to the other immortals, far above the powers of mortals. It was horribly ungrateful of her to feel so desolate.

  His new wildcat cub danced up to her. Captured from the spirit realm like his first cat had been, this one was all black with a golden underbelly. She was still only half-grown, all skinny legs, long tail, and big paws. She knocked her fuzzy head against Hekate’s knees in affection. Hekate scratched her fondly behind the ears.

  Dionysos had begun to move on, unlike Hekate. He’d at least acquired a new pet to care for after Thanatos had killed the first one. Hekate hadn’t done much except brood around the Underworld.

  Dionysos’ leg touched her back, warming a length of her windblown body through her wool robes. The fur-lined edge of his cloak flapped against her arm in the breeze. He sat beside her, draping the cloak around her. The cub hopped into his lap.

  Hekate burrowed into his warmth, the brightest and most soothing power in her life these past three months. Winter still chilled her heart, in spite of the spring bulbs now blooming. But she had recovered in small ways at least: she had dismantled her parents’ bed a month after they died, packed away most of their possessions in a trunk, and turned their large bedchamber into her sitting room. She had also by now invited Dionysos to rejoin her as a lover. When he held and stroked her, she believed, for a few relaxed moments each day, that life and happiness would return again. Dying-and-rising gods were inspiring that way.

  “Full moon,” she said. “You should be at a festival.”

  “They go on whether I’m there or not. I don’t need to preside.”

  “Don’t you miss them?”

  “A little. I’ll return one of these months.”

  At the last Dionysia they had attended, everything had fallen into bloody pieces. Going to another would be difficult, but surely a necessary step for conquering her sadness and fears. Someday.

  She pulled her knees up under the fur cloak and chose a different topic. “I wonder where Zeus and Hera will end up.”

  “I wonder too. Aphrodite will be able to track him, at least. None of us can track Hera.”

  Hekate nodded. The souls of Zeus and Hera had departed the Underworld that morning. They hadn’t waited to say farewell in person to any of their living immortal friends, though they left well-wishes via the other souls, such as Hades and Persephone.

  “They felt it was time to move on,” Persephone told her daughter when Hekate awoke today. “They didn’t want to make a fuss or have anyone try to stop them.”

  So they were gone, out into the living world to be reborn.

  Hermes had immediately dashed to Aphrodite’s island to ask her to trace Zeus, but she was unable to sense him yet. Perhaps the Goddess hadn’t yet assigned his soul to a new unborn child, or else it took some time before the soul of the child was strong enough for other immortals to sense.

  “I wonder how long before we’ll know if he’s immortal again,” Dionysos said.

  “I wonder.”

  “Your parents will never leave like that,” he assured. “They would talk to you first, make sure you were all right with it.”

  She hadn’t been thinking of that sobering possibility this particular moment, but it had certainly haunted her much of the day. “I know they wouldn’t.”

  “They’ll wait a long while yet. They’ll want to know what happens to Zeus and Hera too. Or Zeus, at least, since we can’t know where Hera is.”

  She nodded. But even in the best case scenario, where her parents were reborn immortal once again, or at least were kept safe as mortals until they could be fed the orange, they would almost certainly be born without their memories, and definitely to new parents who would love them. How could Hekate step in and claim someone else’s children as her family, and take them back to the Underworld to reinstate them in their former lives? How could she break apart other families that way? She could wait till the children were grown, perhaps, and about to go their own ways as everyone must, but that would mean waiting twelve to eighteen years, watching from a distance. All without her parents’ souls knowing who she was.

  So on the day they did decide to fly free from the Underworld and be born anew, then she would know grief. It would be their second death, and their true death to her.

  She shrank into a tighter ball beneath Dionysos’ cloak. Even with the knowledge of reincarnation to console her, her best case scenario felt like a sea of sadness that would one day drown her.

  ***

  “Dude!” Tabitha leaped in front of Adrian in the fields. “Freddie Mercury is down here. I found him and talked to him!”

  Adrian smiled, though the expression felt foreign on his face now. “Course he is. Lots of people are.”

  “I am only just now realizing how potentially awesome this place is. I want to talk to John Lennon! And June and Johnny Cash! And—oh my God, do you think Marilyn Monroe’s still here?”

  “Haven’t thought to look for her. Feel free.” He looked past her at the group sitting beneath a grove of silver-leafed trees: Liam and Sophie and their grandmother, along with the souls of Terry and Isabel and Terry’s father. Zoe played with Kiri nearby, staying in range in case the family needed anything.

  Tab tossed her smooth blonde hair over her shoulder as she turned to look at the family too. “They all seem to be doing good. Well, except Sophie, maybe.” She shot Adrian a troubled look. “I do think she’ll come around. Seriously. It’s just…it’s tough, what she went through.”

  “Don’t let her blame herself, all right?” he said. “I’ve told her that, but if her friends say it too, maybe it’ll sink in.”

  “You say that like you’re not one of her friends.”

  “I’m not sure she sees me as one anymore.” Before Tab could get out more than an, “Ah, come on,” he stepped away and followed the path.

  He wanted to help. He ached to cradle Sophie in his arms and let her cry on his shirt for however many hours it took before she felt better. But she wouldn’t let him. Of course she did cry—he saw it in her puffy eyelids, saw her from a distance wiping her eyes when she talked to her parents’ souls, and heard the choked sniffles sometimes from the bathtub or the bedchamber, when he crept near enough outside the rooms to listen, because he couldn’t bear not to check on her. But from Adrian she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, accept even the smallest touch now. Evidently when she tried, it made her physically sick.

  His friends should have let Thanatos kill him.

  From a distance he studied the family he had torn apart. Sophie sat in the deepest of the tree’s shadows, quiet but composed. Grammy looked beatifically happy, her lined face all smiles. Liam piped up with another excited comment to his parents about past lives—they were letting Grammy overhear all that, which hardly mattered anymore; she was clearly going to have to be in on the secrets.

  Adrian turned away. The Darrows were getting along fine without him. Would be getting along far better if they’d never met him.

  He walked the path that wound toward the pomegranate orchard. Kiri shot into view, running
past and then circling back.

  Zoe fell into step beside him too. “Everyone asks how they are,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the Darrows. “But how are you?”

  He cut a glance toward her, then reached his arm out, palm down. “You tell me.”

  She enclosed his wrist in her hands. He felt nothing but her cool touch, but after a moment she hissed in a breath as if burned. “Ah, mate.”

  He yanked his hand away.

  She grabbed it back. “Hold still.”

  He felt a sensation of calm; nothing as dramatic as happiness, but a lessening of anguish. He pulled in his breath, realizing he’d been tight in the chest for he didn’t know how long.

  Zoe let go of his hand. “There. If you’re going to let me read that kind of pain, you have to let me treat it, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not that it’ll last. Immortal bodies throw off spells as fast as we throw off injury. But try to hang onto it, all right?”

  He nodded to appease her. But she was right; within a minute the anguish had begun to creep back. He kept walking and tried not to let it show.

  “Let’s find Niko,” he said quietly.

  They followed their tracking sense to Niko, and found him wandering between columns and stalagmites near the back of the cave, in a section of the Underworld without the usual grasses and flowers. It looked more like a proper cave back here, all rock formations in bizarre shapes, as if the wax from giant candles had dripped and solidified.

  Niko wore his dark red fleece and warm hat, and black jeans and sneakers. Lately he’d been more subdued than usual in his choice of wardrobe. He acknowledged their arrival with a glance at Adrian and a flicker of a smile at Zoe, then continued tracing his fingers along a column and peering up into the cave’s dark ceiling.

  “Look, it’s no good,” Adrian said. “Someone has to go back to the battle, and it might as well be me.”

  “Ade,” Zoe said. “She’s just suffering. She does love you.”

  “Loves me so much she nearly loses her lunch when she tries to kiss me, yeah. What she needs is to be rid of the sight of me.” He folded his arms, digging his fingers into his elbows.