Coils

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “Not too shabby, my little love,” she said, almost a croon. But as swiftly as her face relaxed, it tightened into rage. “Why does everyone leave me in the end?” Her voice echoed through the streets like a rusty saw trying to cut metal, and everyone clapped their hands to their ears.

  June didn’t respond, and the two circled each other, one armed with the harpe, one with darkness itself. This can’t be happening, Cressida thought. Her aunt was not Perseus reborn, and she did not at one time kill the woman Cressida had come to have feelings for. Cressida didn’t know if she exactly loved Medusa, but the fact was that someone she didn’t care about could never have hurt her so badly. And now she couldn’t believe June was throwing her life away for the chance at eternal paradise by killing a god, an act sanctioned by some other gods who would rather do away with a problem than actually solve it.

  Who was the villain here?

  “Stop.” Cressida needed time to breathe, time to think. Maybe June needed time, too, maybe then she’d see how fucked up this was. “Stop.”

  June swung the harpe, and Persephone shifted out of the way. As Persephone threw another ball of blackness, and June batted it aside, Cressida screamed, a sound that rang in her ears as the inky ball arced toward a group of bystanders who raised their arms to shield themselves, but it wouldn’t be enough. They were going to die, just like June. Maybe just like everyone if June somehow failed, and Persephone turned her ire on the spectators.

  But for now, the doomed bystanders needed to not be standing where they were anymore.

  And so they weren’t.

  Cressida’s scream died in her throat as the group of five goners appeared beside her, arms still raised, faces creased with the expectation of pain. When it didn’t come, a few opened their eyes and peered around cautiously.

  “What the fuck?” Medusa said. “Did you do that? Who did that?”

  “I think…” Cressida looked back to the fight, but Persephone and June didn’t seem to notice what had happened. Pressure built inside Cressida again as June dashed forward, swinging the harpe and cutting a line of fire across Persephone’s arm. Persephone cried out in a voice that vibrated through Cressida’s core and shook the buildings in their foundations. Persephone caught June and hurled her toward a streetlight that would surely break her back.

  “No!” Cressida called, and the streetlight sagged, becoming transparent. When June crashed into it, it folded around her like a giant gummy candy, and she rolled unhurt to the street.

  Cressida put a hand to her chest. She felt something similar to what swearing by the River Styx had done to her, a pressure that had vanished when she’d handed over the ambrosia. But this wasn’t as if she was forgetting something. It felt more like remembering. The Underworld was built on belief, that’s what everyone had told her, and some parts of her brain appeared to have been listening harder than others. The denizens of the Underworld shaped their surroundings, some more than others like Medea with her illusions. And just like in Medea’s basement, Cressida’s belief counted for more because she was alive, and that meant June’s counted for more, too. June had wanted this to happen on some level, and so it had, everything lining up so she and Persephone could duke it out in front of an audience.

  “Son of a bitch!” Anger churned like acid in Cressida’s heart. She’d been a pawn so many times in this adventure, just like the women she’d pitied in myth, those who’d been unfortunate enough to be caught in the schemes of gods.

  “Well, not anymore, you fuckers!” She shrugged out of her backpack and threw it to the ground. A few people sidled away, and everyone gave her a wary glance. “What the hell are you looking at?”

  “Cressida?” Medusa asked as she stepped away from her sisters. “What’s—”

  “Just watch this!” Cressida concentrated, and the pavement between June and Persephone lifted in a tearing crunch and the squeal of metal as Cressida divided them. June stumbled back, eyeing the newly made wall.

  “Are you…doing that?” Agamemnon asked.

  Medusa smiled slowly. “You’re using your belief.”

  “How is that possible?” Adonis asked with a frown.

  Cressida gestured for them all to stay back. “Who’s the big dick now?”

  “Um, you?” Narcissus leaned toward Adonis. “Is that what she wants to hear?”

  Agamemnon’s face screwed up as if he might disagree, but Arachne jabbed him in the ribs and gave Cressida a slightly panicky smile. Pandora was watching her with open-mouthed wonder.

  On the battlefield, June frowned as if working out what was happening. “Cressi, is that you? Don’t interfere!”

  “Like hell!”

  A chunk of the pavement wall blew outward, and Persephone stepped through. Cressida concentrated and brought the street up, circling Persephone like a fence, looping it over and around itself, pulling at the pavement for miles across.

  “Stop it!” Medea cried.

  Medusa got in her way, her snake features flowing over her. “Stay back.”

  Cressida waved a hand, and Medea disappeared as Cressida sent her to the other side of the Underworld.

  “Whatever you’re doing,” Adonis said, “keep it up. Maybe I can get in there and talk to Persephone, try to calm her.”

  Yes, if everyone could just talk, they could settle down, but she could hear Persephone beating on the walls of her prison. Maybe Cressida could move her to the Terrace, or imprison her somewhere it would take her a while to get out of, and Cressida could drag June back to the real world.

  But when she tried, Persephone wouldn’t budge. Cressida pushed harder, believing Persephone elsewhere with all her will, but the sounds from inside the asphalt continued. Well, she supposed the will of a god had to be pretty strong.

  But she felt the rest of the Underworld trembling, awaiting her command. Even Tartarus was twitching in his prison, the whole place longing for someone to put it on the right track. It had been operating on the belief of its denizens for so long, changing at their whim, but maybe that wasn’t enough for it. The rest of the gods were gone, and its queen seemed to have forgotten about most of it. Cressida felt it reaching for her, wanting her to say what it should do and when, and all she had to do was put her finger on the right button.

  She felt another will pulling at hers and thought it might be June or Hecate or even Persephone trying to wrest control. She pushed against them, but the ground lurched, and the sounds of Asphodel snapped away. She turned and slid on a marble floor that gleamed so brightly she couldn’t look directly at it. Glowing fog surrounded her, as if she stood in the middle of a cloud punctuated with lights so bright they could have been stars.

  Shade fog? No, it was too bright, though hazy forms glided through it. She saw figures that might be people, but a feel of otherness surrounded them, as if they were simply a collection of parts put together for some purpose other than just living.

  She squinted at them, seeing more than just limbs, torsos, and heads. She spotted the slope of a helmet and a spear carried by a figure in a dress, and her education saved her again as she thought of the attributes of various Greek gods. Helmet plus spear plus dress equaled Athena.

  As she peered, she saw more objects standing out: the golden points of Hera’s crown, the curve of Artemis’s bow, and the arcs of Hermes’s winged sandals. At the center of them, on a high dais, she saw the outline of a throne with the brightest light shining inside it. That would be Zeus, and flanking him was a form holding a trident, and one wearing a helmet, his light containing swirls of darkness: Poseidon and Hades.

  There were more, scores of them, too many to count, and she heard their whispers, but no loud booming voices. Like the rest of their brethren, they’d faded. She felt their words more than heard them, the Hades figure being angriest of all.

  “Ah,” Cressida said, her own anger still bright within her. “This is the deus ex machina, yes? The end of the Greek play where the gods sort everything out?”

  And now t
he whispers flew fast, some voices furious, others intrigued. They really wanted to bring their worship back. They’d come to depend on belief, to be fueled by it as their creation, humanity, grew and began to change the world to suit humans instead of gods. Then as belief waned, so did the gods who’d come to feed on it. They’d created their own destruction.

  But even here, in what she assumed was left of Mount Olympus, she could feel the fabric of the place waiting. Yes, they were powerful, but just like everything else, they were finished. And the very air around them was crying out for something new, something aware, something that had moved with the times or was at least a product of it.

  As she focused on moving herself back to where she’d been, she felt the gods’ surprise. The specters of Athena, Demeter, and Hermes moved closer. They agreed with her, with one twist: Yes, their time on earth was done, but the afterlife needn’t be as bleak as what she’d seen. And Demeter didn’t want her daughter to die. Persephone had been driven out of her mind by loneliness, but she didn’t have to be lonely forever. She could be healed. There could be change without death.

  The paths through the Underworld didn’t have to remain shut.

  Cressida grinned and focused, and with the help of the three gods, shifted back to Asphodel. Persephone had fought her way out of her pavement prison and was pursuing June again.

  Medusa grabbed Cressida’s arm. “You disappeared!”

  “I know.”

  “Cressida, you have to leave now. It’s too dangerous. My sisters and I will find a way to tackle June, and then we’ll follow you to Cerberus’s cave—”

  Cressida laid a finger over her mouth. “I’m going to unstick you.”

  Medusa’s eyebrows raised. Cressida laughed, and even though she hadn’t forgiven Medusa, she understood the lies. And she hoped she understood why Medusa wanted her to leave. Even before their kiss, Medusa had wanted Cressida to go. Her conscience had been too loud; that had to mean her feelings for Cressida had grown as strong as Cressida’s had for her.

  “Help me.” Cressida took one of Medusa’s hands and then one of Adonis’s. “If you don’t want Persephone to die and the living world to fall under the sway of gods and monsters again, help me.”

  Before they could ask what she meant, she showed them, and they gasped at the presence of the three gods. They hadn’t come with Cressida in what was left of their physical forms. She sensed they couldn’t do that even if they wanted to, but they’d lent her some of their essence, and everyone that got close to her had to feel it.

  Cressida felt along the paths that kept the dead locked where they were, everyone forbidden from moving to the layer above them. Then with the help of the gods and those around her, Cressida tore down the gates of paradise.

  *

  Cressida’s arrival and the tasks they’d undertaken together would go down in history as the most memorable in Medusa’s unlife. They would have made her living top ten as well. She’d gone to Tartarus and reunited with her mother; she’d witnessed a fight between a hero of legend and a god; discovered a deep attraction that was blossoming into something even deeper; she’d found the man who’d murdered her, only he was the aunt of the woman she was falling for; and now she was helping that same woman—with three other gods—to tear down the gates that separated the Underworld’s eternal haves from its everlasting have-nots.

  She sighed as the gates fell. Agamemnon, Pandora, and Arachne shouted as the fence to the Elysian Fields dissolved. Rolling hills of fresh green grass stretched into the distance, dotted with trees and sparkling streams. And sunlight! Artificial but worlds better than Asphodel’s ghastly gray fog.

  Heroes and nymphs paused in the middle of a huge brawl and turned to look at the Asphodel side with faces full of wonder and terror, and Medusa knew many of them had forgotten there was anything but paradise. The nymphs, dryads, and others of their kind sometimes crossed back and forth, but the heroes almost never did. They didn’t want to remember, but now they wandered toward Asphodel, calling out names, searching for people they once knew.

  June and Persephone had stopped fighting to look at the Fields with the same open-mouthed wonder as everyone else. Persephone took a step toward the light, bright eyes wide. “Mother?”

  “Cressida, what are you doing?” June shouted. “Stop this!”

  “Can’t fight if you don’t have anything to fight for,” Cressida muttered.

  Medusa gasped as something sparkled in the distance, in the middle of the Elysian Fields, a shimmering doorway. Through it, she glimpsed mountain peaks and a sparkling lake, and somehow, she knew that if she was standing right beside it, it would smell like the greatest things on earth.

  “No!” June cried. “You can’t offer paradise to the undeserving!”

  “That’s not you talking!” Cressida said. “Not you anymore!”

  June stumbled, shaking her head and frowning as if wondering if that might be true. She launched herself at Persephone’s back.

  “Look out!” Adonis cried.

  Persephone turned in time to catch the harpe full in the chest. She staggered and cried out, the sound rolling from her in waves, shattering glass and battering Medusa’s eardrums so that she fell to the ground, everyone arrayed around her.

  Cressida’s hand clamped down on Medusa’s. “I can’t stop her! I can’t move her or June!”

  Medusa heard the shrieking of the gods, felt their support withdrawing as despair overwhelmed them. June left the harpe in Persephone’s chest and lifted the aegis toward her wide-open eyes. Cressida sobbed as June’s face wavered between what she used to be and who she was becoming again.

  Medusa jumped to her feet, popped her wings out, and leapt, flapping them once to rocket forward. She couldn’t let Cressida’s aunt slip away forever, not when it would hurt Cressida so much. And if June wanted to be Perseus right now, at least that would make her easier to hit.

  June swung the aegis in Medusa’s direction, and her power roiled from it, but she grinned into the force, reveling as it slid harmlessly around her. She tackled June to the ground.

  June’s face seemed to morph into his, and Medusa punched it without hesitation. June’s head rocked back and thunked into the ground with a sound like a coconut falling on a board. Medusa punched twice more, and the part of her that still craved revenge wanted to rip out June’s throat. June might move on to the Isles of the Blessed, but the way was open now. No one would be safe there anymore.

  Medusa clamped her teeth together as they tried to grow longer. “Listen to me,” she said, half to June, half to herself. “Listen!”

  June stilled, her eyes squeezed shut.

  Medusa’s own head dug into her ribs where the aegis lay between them. “I won’t kill you.” Do it, do it, do it! Even if she couldn’t get her hands on Perseus’s shade, killing him would feel so good!

  No! There was more to her than revenge. Hadn’t she already proven that? But Perseus’s throat had never been so close. With a deep breath, she reminded herself that this wasn’t Perseus; it was June. Medusa focused on her face, on the hints of Cressida there. “I won’t kill you. Cressida wouldn’t want me to. Think on that. Think on your family, June, before you make your next move.”

  June slowed her breathing, and her face lost some of Perseus’s lines, but she made no sound. Cressida and Adonis knelt on either side of Persephone. Her eyes rolled, and she groaned in agony.

  “If I pull the harpe out, the gods think they can fix her body,” Cressida said.

  Adonis nodded. “Narcissus, help me.”

  Narcissus stayed back, rubbing his elbows.

  Adonis looked to him, face stricken. “Please, my love, she needs our help!”

  With a sigh that could have been disgust or resignation, Narcissus marched over and took Persephone’s other arm.

  Cressida looked to Medusa. “Have you got her?”

  “For the moment.” Medusa settled more squarely onto June in case she decided to try to get up again, but Jun
e had stilled.

  Cressida smiled, a kindly look, but it lacked the openness Medusa had come to expect. “Everyone ready?”

  “I’m sorry, Cressida,” Medusa blurted. “I’m sorry for lying to you.”

  “I know. And I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing it for everyone else here. I don’t forgive you. Not yet.”

  Harsh words but totally deserved, and she didn’t say them with venom, but Medusa was smart enough to know that not everything could be cured with time. She had no reply, but none was needed.

  Cressida yanked the harpe free, and Persephone shrieked again. The hole in her abdomen glowed white like a supernova, but Medusa didn’t look away. Persephone’s godly essence flooded into the air, but before it could escape, Cressida shoved at it with her hand, forcing it back inside.

  Under her touch and the will of the gods, the hole closed, and Persephone sagged back into Adonis’s and Narcissus’s arms. She lifted one hand toward Adonis’s face. “I remember you. We met once or twice.” She sagged, eyes closing.

  He smiled at her sadly, and the dead were gathering around their little tableau, heroes and denizens of Asphodel alike. Cressida’s eyes remained closed, her lips bent in a smile.

  *

  “Is she all right?” Adonis asked. “She’s not moving.”

  “She’s weak, but…” Cressida shook her head. The essences of the three gods hovered around her as Cressida leaned over Persephone’s head. The wound was closed, and the other gods were trying to speak to Persephone, but she wasn’t hearing them. Any moment she might get up and start fighting again, but Cressida didn’t want to hurt her. Persephone had been kidnapped then abandoned, tricked and trapped. Cressida could understand why her mind might have broken, but she needed help, not punishment. There was no reason for her to die.

  The other gods were trying to pull Persephone bodily to the place they’d retreated to, but her attachment to the Underworld felt as solid as stone. Cressida hadn’t been able to move her, hadn’t been able to compete with the belief of a god, but this was more than that.