by Molly Ringle
She curled up tighter beside Niko, and remembered.
***
Another earthquake thundered through the Underworld one day when Eleusis was just shy of a year old. He’d been crawling through the pale grass after some spirit cats, but the jolting ground dropped him onto his chin and set him wailing. Hekate scooped him up and knelt with him in her arms, keeping her balance as best she could while the earth rumbled and shook. This quake lasted longer than any of the others lately, and by the time it settled down she was trembling with alarm.
She turned toward the river, knowing there’d be casualties streaming in after such a tremor, and her heart already ached for all the mourning families around the region.
A fresh cluster of souls did soon arrive, and she walked to them and began collecting accounts of the earthquake. But some, from Thera or within sight of it, also reported the volcano was erupting.
Before long Hermes dashed in. He stayed down here more often than not lately, to help with Eleusis, but still spent a fair amount of time dashing about in the upper world to collect news. Their year together hadn’t been perfect, of course—like any couple with a new baby (who, as expected, was mortal), they were stressed and tired, and argued often. But on the whole he’d been a more present father than Hekate had ever imagined he’d be, and he had retained his sanity-saving ability to make her and the baby laugh.
“You’ve heard about the volcano?” he said as he jogged up to her.
She nodded, and surrendered Eleusis to him as the baby reached out for his father.
Hermes took him. “Yes, little man. Giant clouds of gray smoke, and lightning, billowing up into the whole sky.” He gave the words a happy tilt, as if telling a pleasant story, but he looked at Hekate with serious eyes. “Everyone’s trying to get off the island. I’m not sure they’ll be fast enough.”
She swallowed. “I’ve told you, against a volcano there isn’t anything I can do. I can cast safety spells, but among so many people it won’t do much good.”
“I know.” He kissed Eleusis on the hand as the baby grabbed for his nose. “This isn’t a case for magic, most likely. But it is a case for as many of us herding people into boats as we can, and rowing as fast as super-humanly possible.”
“Let me come. I can leave Eleusis with Galateia and Akis, and do some good up close if I can. Make the winds push our boats out of the way, or—”
“Don’t you dare.” He kissed the baby and handed him back to Hekate. “You two stay right here, where you’re safest. Promise me. I mean it.”
Though she shook with fear, and what she hoped fervently was not premonition, she nodded, holding their son close. “Be careful,” she entreated. “So careful. Please.”
“Better yet, I’ll be fast.” He kissed her on the lips. “See you soon.”
Out he dashed.
Hekate paced the fields, trying to play with Eleusis or sing songs to him. But the next earthquake, more violent than the last, dropped her to her hands and knees. After it settled, she wrapped Eleusis against her back, stalked out of the fields, and mounted her spirit horse.
A short flight up brought them to the top of the seaside hill, and she gasped. The sky was filling with black clouds, as Hermes had reported, with evil-looking lightning flashing within their folds. Thera was out east in the middle of the Mediterranean, almost as far away as Crete, but the size and force of the rising ash clouds made it look like it was just a valley or two away.
She watched a long while, heart in her throat. The sky darkened—from ash, not sunset. Beneath her, in the forces of the Earth, she felt a terrible deep tension, a power quivering and about to burst.
Please keep them safe, she begged, sending the spell out through every thread of energy she could touch. But that Earth power gathering below: that, she knew, she could not harness or shift, any more than she could have cleared the ash from the sky by flapping a fan at it.
The tension suddenly mounted, becoming an unbearable shriek in her eardrums. Cringing, she leaped back onto the spirit horse with Eleusis, and let him carry them at full speed back into the cave.
Her feet had just touched the ground in the entrance chamber when the explosion rocked the world. The bang throbbed through her head, knocked her to the floor, and set Eleusis howling. She curled up with him beneath her body, covering his ears and shushing him, wrapping a protective shield of magic around the two of them, while the ground heaved and thundered. Stalactites snapped off and smashed onto the floor. Through her ringing ears, she heard Kerberos barking frantically, and soon he skidded across the jolting ground and huddled against Hekate and Eleusis, inside their protective bubble.
The roar rolled past after a long, long reign, and she finally dared lift her head. Total darkness loomed in the bit of sky visible through the cave mouth, and a rain of ash sifted down through the opening.
The souls streamed in thick—so many new dead, oh, too many.
The earth was still rumbling, but Hekate sank back on her knees and gazed up at the end of the world. The aftershocks gradually died away, her hopes dying with them. The influx of souls came and came, and soon brought the ones she had dreaded.
Hermes settled his luminescent, immaterial feet on the rock-scattered floor, and knelt before her. Behind him, like birds folding their wings, arrived others she knew.
Aphrodite. Dionysos. Ariadne. Pan. Apollo. Artemis. Athena. And more. Oh, Goddess, almost everyone.
She looked into Hermes’ sad, sympathetic eyes. “How?” she whispered.
“We weren’t fast enough.” His mouth formed a small smile. “Would you believe, we actually got everyone off the island and into the boats. But when the volcano blew, it took out everything and everyone for a wide swath all around. Obviously.” He looked back at the thick flow of arriving souls.
“Even immortals.” Hekate’s mouth was dry and gritty with dust. She couldn’t even weep yet; she was too shocked. Her gaze lifted to travel across all her freshly dead friends, who regarded her with tenderness.
“Now I’ll be staying with you every day, not just occasionally,” Hermes said, sounding almost lighthearted. Almost. “And I will stay, at least until he’s grown.” He ran his intangible hand through Eleusis’ arm. The baby had stopped wailing and was gazing at his father’s soul with a confused frown. “I know it’s cold comfort, but I do want to be near you both a while longer.”
“Lots of us will stay and help,” Dionysos said. “As much as we can.”
“Our company is surely worth something, at least,” Aphrodite said, with the same beguiling smile that had dazzled thousands when she’d been alive.
Hekate nodded. Then with one arm around her dog and the other holding her child, she bowed her head and let her tears fall.
***
Zoe kept her eyes squeezed shut, and sniffled. Hey, she wasn’t actually sobbing, so that was a victory. Just, you know, some mistiness here, bit of a lump in the throat.
“Goddess,” she squeaked. “That fucking blows.”
Niko chuckled. “Nice choice of words.”
“You can laugh about it?”
He gave her a squeeze. “Like I said, I’m thrilled you care this much. And look. Look, look.” He gently shook her.
She dabbed her jacket sleeve against her eyes. “What.”
“Life,” he announced. “The twenty-first century. Us, alive again, and better yet, immortal. So chin up.”
“Suppose.” She sniffled again, and straightened her back so she wasn’t slumped against him like a weakling. “Thera, that’s what, Santorini now?”
“Yep. Now crescent-shaped because of the volcano blasting out the middle of it.”
She considered that sweet brown-haired baby, and let her memories unspool further: he became a talking three-year-old, a cleverly rhyming five-year-old, a gawky but patient eight-year-old. Probably more, if she had the energy to think about it, which she did not right now.
“Who’s Eleusis today?” she asked.
He took o
ut his phone, tapped a few things, and handed it to her with a photo on the screen: a young man, maybe thirty-ish, his kind features looking at least part Asian, one shoulder swathed in the orange robes of a Buddhist monk.
“Wow,” she said. “I’m guessing he’s doing something good with his life.”
“Quite. He’s one of the youngest Buddhist leaders in Thailand. He’s also…” Niko scratched his ear, avoiding Zoe’s gaze. “My son.”
“In this life? You have kids in this life?”
“I know, right? How could a child of mine have ended up choosing celibacy?”
“How many? How many children do you have?”
He let his hand drop, and met her eyes. “Three. With three different mothers, in three different countries. All are grown up now, and I’ve had very little to do with any of their lives. But I do check up on them regularly, and though I’m sure they despise me for being such a deadbeat dad, I’m deeply proud of each of them.”
Zoe swallowed, and regarded the photo of the monk, whose eyes did indeed carry some of the slyness of Niko’s. “Okay. I’ve officially hit overload. Too many emotions for one day.” She handed him back his phone, then scowled at him. “You made me remember your death just to turn me as soft on you as possible, didn’t you?”
“Can you blame me? How often will I get to play that card?”
She smiled, and bowed her head so her temple brushed his shoulder again. “Ah, mate. My soul loves yours. It does. But this lifetime, my body won’t get on board. I’ve tried, and it refuses. I don’t suppose we can just be platonic together?”
“I’ve had platonic relationships. I’m capable of it, believe it or not. But with you…” He caressed her knee. “I do tend to want more, I admit. Besides, would that arrangement really make you happy?”
She considered a biromantic, unsexual future, and her heart admitted defeat. She looked at him with her lips twisted in a grimace in answer.
“That’s what I thought,” he said. He touched his nose to her cheek. “Don’t fret. Sexuality can be fluid, as they say these days. Maybe your body will change its mind someday.”
“You wish.”
“I do wish.”
At that moment both their phones buzzed with a new message. Part of the extra wiring lately added to the Underworld included signal repeaters so they could stay online inside the cave—important for security these days. She grabbed hers out of her pocket and looked at it, fearing some all-points-bulletin of disaster.
But it was from Adrian, sent to her and Niko. Could one of you please track Mars tonight? I want to stay with Sophie. P.S. Turns out she did mean “Valentine’s Day.” :)
Niko chuckled, reading the same message on his own phone. “I knew it.”
“Yep, that cinches that. Tab texted me about it earlier. See?” She navigated to Tab’s text, and showed Niko.
Soph and Ade just sent me away so they could have private time. Aw yeah, the good ship Hades/Persephone sails again!
Niko laughed. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I was a bit wrapped up in the memories. That seemed more important at the time. Besides, who’s surprised they got back together, honestly?”
“Well, no one.” Niko tapped at his text messages. “Shall we stake out Thanatos together tonight?”
“Weirdest and least fun date ever. Let’s do it.”
Chapter Fifty-One
The volcano’s eruption threw all the lands around the Mediterranean into disaster. Ash fell from the skies for days, suffocating crops and polluting the water in streams and wells until most of it was undrinkable. The explosion had not only killed everyone in the boats around Thera; it had also caused a giant wave to rush ashore on Crete, where it had toppled buildings and drowned hundreds.
“Does the Goddess despise us?” Hekate asked her friends as she huddled under an Underworld tree, nursing Eleusis.
Rhea had survived, having been farther north when the eruption took place, and she had come to see Hekate today. The souls of Ariadne, Dionysos, and Hermes sat around her too, in a disconsolate circle. Several other immortals still lived, at least, Poseidon and Amphitrite among them. Also apparently Ares, who at least wasn’t down here right now.
Hekate had rushed up to check on Galateia and Akis the first day, but they and their baby were all right; just frightened, like everyone, and busy putting their disarrayed village back in order.
“Volcanoes have always existed, as far as we know,” Rhea said. “Does the Goddess use them to punish us? Or are they just natural forces that act out sometimes? I’ve never been sure, but I feel it’s the latter. At least, I hope so.”
“It’s interesting that Crete suffered in this event,” Ariadne said, “not long after Thanatos took over. Perhaps the Goddess was trying to do some good that way.”
“But at the cost of all this?” Hekate waved her hand at her dead friends, and widened the gesture to include the fields of souls, where the volcano had sent so many innocent folk. “And why must the chrysomelia trees be ailing at the same time? I must be doing something terribly wrong to be punished like this.”
“It isn’t only you who’s being punished,” Hermes pointed out. “Nor are you responsible for everything that happens in the world. That said, love, there’s much you could do to help up there. You know they need it.”
She looked at his ethereal face, though tears still filled her eyes every time she did so. She nodded. “You’re right. I’ll go up today.”
Rhea squeezed her knee. “I’ll come with you.”
Hekate strapped Eleusis to her back with a length of cloth, and went out with Rhea into the devastated world. They visited villages and performed grim but helpful work: setting broken bones and treating injuries, dragging collapsed walls and roofs out of the way, and, in Hekate’s case, using magic to separate grit from clean water and to blow away the fallen ash from vegetable gardens. But the latter didn’t do much good, as most of the plants had been crushed and killed. Food was going to be an issue for the coming year or more. Widespread famine, with disease surely on its heels—what next?
One man was too badly injured to save. His house had collapsed and crushed his body from the navel down. He was growing old and lived alone, and his neighbors had pulled him out of the rubble, but Hekate could tell at a glance—and confirmed by a touch—that he wouldn’t last long. She began taking out some of the dried red violets from the Underworld for him, but he clutched her cloak.
“Please,” he said. “Finish me off quickly. I beg you.”
“I—I can numb your pain with these,” she said.
But he shook his head. “I want it to be over. You can do it fast, I know you can.”
He must have heard of her magic, though she wasn’t in the habit of using it to kill anyone, even out of mercy. Hoping for guidance, she looked at the neighbors who stood nearby, a man and woman. The woman shrugged in helplessness, and the man gave her a grave nod. Rhea, standing near, added a nod too. Easy for her to endorse. She’d sacrificed healthy people back in her priestess days.
Hekate laid her trembling hand on the patient’s chest, not even sure how to do what he asked. Stop his heart? His breath? Wouldn’t both of those cause at least some suffering? She probed his ebbing life energy, then sensed something she’d rarely dared look for in anyone: the winding line, like a long seam, where his soul connected to his body. Perhaps in him it was easier to detect because he was so close to death already, and the seam was starting to come apart, like stitches pulling loose.
“Please,” the man echoed.
She looked at him. “Are you ready, good sir?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper.
He nodded, gaze fixed on her in fearful gratitude.
Hekate closed her eyes, found the seam, and wrapped her will around the man’s soul like she was embracing it. She pulled.
A gasp wracked her lungs. The man shuddered and went limp. His soul streamed away to the other realm; she felt his energy flow past. She withdrew her hand,
shaking all over, and looked at the others. Rhea looked composed, but the man and woman stepped back and were making every warding-off-evil gesture they could think of.
“It—it’s all right,” she told them. “He’s…at peace. I wouldn’t—I’ve never—this is the first…”
Rhea gathered them out of the way, gently offering to help with the man’s funeral preparations. Hekate shut her mouth and sat stunned. No one would believe she’d never ripped out a person’s soul before. She’d done it so efficiently here. It was in theory a useful skill to have—at least against Thanatos or in similar situations—but at the moment it horrified her to know she possessed such an ability.
They returned to the Underworld, Hekate dreading how to tell Hermes and the others about this newfound power. Would they encourage her to use it more? The notion filled her with revulsion.
But when she entered the fields, those ruminations were chased out of her head when she spotted Ares stalking toward her, his usually groomed clothing dusted with ash. Behind him, Aphrodite’s soul looked after him in an attitude of concern, hands clasped before her. As Ares approached Hekate and Rhea, she noticed his reddened eyes and nostrils, and realized he’d been weeping. Probably Aphrodite was one of the few people he’d ever loved, and he grieved for her. For a moment Hekate’s heart softened toward him.
Then he opened his mouth.
“A lot of good you do us down here,” he said. “Where were you when the world could have used your ‘powers’? How could you let this happen to so many of our own?”
She tried to sound conciliatory. “Ares, I would have stopped it if I could. My powers are quite limited compared to the Earth itself. I tried, and there was nothing I could do—”
“Bring her back!” He stamped his foot on the grass. “You must have a way!”
“I don’t.” Despair entered her voice. Yes, she could rip out souls, but reinstalling them was surely a great deal harder. “If I did, don’t you think I’d have used it by now? For my parents? For Hermes, for my friends?”