Hound of Hades #2

by Lucy Coats

  “Musical items retrieved and saved to disk,” said the box as the trumpet detached itself and slipped back inside the lid. One ingredient down, five more and a magic cauldron to go, Demon thought. Suddenly his stomach began to rumble loudly, and he realized he was hungry. It seemed like a very long time since he’d had those sausages on buns in Hestia’s kitchens.

  “Oh dear,” said Orpheus. “I’d forgotten humans need food. That’s too bad.”

  “What do you mean?” Demon asked.

  “Well,” said Orpheus, “you mustn’t eat anything down here. That’s how Hades caught his wife, Queen Persephone. She only ate seven pomegranate seeds, and now she has to stay down here for four months of every year. You can’t let even one thing pass your lips until you return to the upper world, or you’ll be Hades’s prisoner forever.”

  Demon suddenly remembered that Hermes had told him the same thing. He decided to ignore his stomach, however much it complained. He definitely didn’t want to be Hades’s prisoner for one single minute, let alone forever.

  “Now show me that list,” said Orpheus, holding out his insubstantial hand. Demon took it out of the folds of his tunic and handed it over at once. Unfortunately, the piece of parchment slipped right through Orpheus’s fingers and drifted to the ground. Demon picked it up and held it out so that Orpheus could see the pictures.

  “Hmm. Spiderwebs are easy. Arachne has lots. And grass-of-Parnassus grows by the banks of the River Lethe, just where it joins the marsh. I’m not sure about this yellow flower, but Eurydice is sure to know.”

  “Who’s Eurydice?” Demon interrupted. Orpheus’s see-through cheeks took on a slightly pink shade, as if Eos had just touched him with her fingers.

  “Er, she’s my girlfriend,” he muttered. “Hades is always forbidding us to be together, but we don’t take much notice … that’s why I don’t want him to catch me.” He cast a very nervous glance back at the silver skulls on top of the palace. “Anyway,” he said, changing the subject quickly, “let’s start with the hero’s toenail. That shouldn’t be too hard. There are at least a thousand of them down here, and it doesn’t say it has to be a live hero, does it?”

  “No,” said Demon, “it doesn’t. But where—?” He broke off, suddenly noticing that the crowds of people and ghosts he’d seen when Hades had made him look through the window of the gate were drifting toward them over the plain. There was a lot of noise going on, and the sound of a man shouting. “Might there be a hero in that bunch?” he asked.

  “Almost certainly,” said Orpheus. “Follow me. And try not to get trampled in the crush.” He shot forward, the bottom half of his body dissolving into mist as he did so. Demon sprinted in his wake, with the box galloping clumsily behind.

  Demon felt a bit nervous. He hadn’t met a hero before. Were they as scary as gods and goddesses? Surely not, he thought. Heroes were supposed to be good, weren’t they? Then he remembered Heracles. Heracles called himself a hero, so maybe that wasn’t true, after all.

  Just then, Demon reached the crowd and crashed hard into the tall man called Georgios whom Hades had pointed out earlier. Up close he had a very large stomach and enormous, extremely dirty feet. All thought of heroes was knocked out of Demon’s head as he tripped and landed with a bump, right on top of the box.

  “Oof! Operating system overload! Operating system overload!” it squawked, spitting blue sparks. Demon got up hurriedly. He couldn’t afford for it to break. There was no Heffy down here to fix it.

  “What’s this, what’s this?” said a loud voice above him as he struggled to his feet. “I don’t remember you being on my tour. Have you sneaked in without paying? Can’t have that, can I?” said Georgios, waving his red placard.

  “No,” said Demon, indignant at the accusation. “I haven’t. I’m on a job for Hades, if you must know.”

  The man laughed. “A likely story,” he said. “A little shrimp like you on a job for His Majesty, the god of death? I don’t think so, sonny. And what’s that you’ve got there? Stolen it, have you?” He reached down for the box, but as his fingers touched it, it let out an orange flash of lightning, which made the man snatch his hand away with a shriek.

  “Oops! Error code 93. That wasn’t supposed to happen,” said the box. It didn’t sound very sorry, though. Demon felt like patting it, for once.

  “Perhaps that’ll teach you to believe people when they’re telling the truth,” he said. Georgios backed away, sucking his burned hand. He gave Demon a nasty look, waved his red placard over his head, and walked off muttering. Then he began to shout again.

  “Move along, people! Move along! Follow Georgios’s Underworld Tours sign! Best and only one in the business! Next stop, Achilles and Ajax.” A chattering crowd fell in behind the man as Demon began to look for Orpheus. There was such a press of ghosts and people around him that he couldn’t see the musician boy at all. He began to panic, but then caught sight of a misty lyre, held up high over everyone’s heads, waving wildly. He began to run toward it, pushing his way between ghostly figures. They melted and flowed around (and sometimes through) him as he went, leaving him cold and shivering. He wished he’d remembered his cloak. Finally he got through to Orpheus.

  “We’ll never find anyone in this crowd,” shouted the ghost. “Georgios’s tours are making the Underworld a nightmare. Come this way!”

  After more pushing and shoving, they came to a dead tree where several warrior ghosts wearing armor and carrying swords were gathered. With them was a gigantic man with a bow on his back, a belt made of faintly shining stars, and a mass of ghostly hounds at his feet.

  “There’s your hero,” said Orpheus.

  “Is that Orion?” whispered Demon. Orpheus nodded, so Demon marched up to him bravely. Orion had been killed by the giant scorpion, Demon’s least favorite beast in the Stables. Although Orion was a hunter, and he didn’t normally like hunters, Demon had some sympathy for him. Demon had been stung by the giant scorpion, too. It hurt a lot.

  “Excuse me, Your Extreme Heroicness,” he said. “But could I have one of your toenails, please?”

  All the warrior ghosts laughed. “You human souvenir hunters!” one of them said. “Bits from ghosts never last up in the mortal world, you know!”

  “I’m not a souvenir hunter,” said Demon angrily. “I’m the Official Beast Keeper to the gods. It’s for a potion to cure Cerberus.”

  “Ah,” said Orion. “Poor old Cerberus. We heard what happened. It’s been chaos down here ever since. Well, if that’s what it’s for, you can certainly have one, Beast Keeper.”

  Orion shooed the ghost dogs away, bent down to his left foot, and pulled one of his large square toenails right off, making ghostly blood ooze onto his sandal. Immediately, a pair of pincers came out of the box and grabbed it.

  “Toenail item recovered,” it trilled happily.

  “Thanks, Orion,” Demon said gratefully, trying not to look at the misty blood pooling under the hero’s foot. Then he had a thought. “Um, do you know where we could find a maiden’s sigh, by any chance?” he asked. Orion and the others snickered.

  “Orpheus here will help you with that,” Orion said, winking. “He’s got a few maidens sighing after him.”

  Orpheus blushed again. “Shhh!” he said. “Stop teasing me. You know there’s only one I care about. Come on, Demon, let’s go and find Eurydice.”

  Just four things to go now, Demon thought as they walked away from the laughing warriors. Maybe he could do this in one day, after all.

  It took ages to reach the grove where Eurydice lived, but they got there at last. She was a tall, beautiful ghost with long hair down to her knees. Getting her to sigh into the box’s trumpet attachment was easy. She just had to look at Orpheus. Demon stared at the two of them in disgust while they hugged and kissed as if they hadn’t seen each other for years. He didn’t get this being-in-love thing at all.

  “Ahem,” he said at last, clearing his throat loudly. “Spiderwebs? Yellow petals? Grass-of-
Parnassus? Cauldron of Healing?” The two lovers took absolutely no notice of him, gazing into each other’s eyes goopily.

  “I STILL NEED FOUR THINGS TO CURE CERBERUS!” he yelled at last. Both Orpheus and Eurydice jumped a foot into the air and then dissolved into streamers of mist.

  “Don’t DO that!” said Orpheus’s voice indistinctly. “I thought Hades had caught us for a minute. Now we’ll have to disentangle ourselves.”

  Tapping his foot impatiently, Demon waited while the two lovers sorted themselves out. “Now,” he said. “Are you going to help me find the other things or not?”

  CHAPTER 7

  THE SPINNER’S CAVE

  “Ooh!” said Eurydice, clapping her ghostly hands as she looked at Demon’s list. They made no sound. “That’s Cerberus’s new flower!”

  “Cerberus’s new flower? What do you mean?”

  “The wolfsbane petals. It was when Heracles was dragging him back down here from earth,” said Eurydice. “I was coming out of Arachne’s cave, and I saw it. Wherever his drool touched the ground, little yellow flowers sprang up, just like buttercups. They were so pretty. I’ve never seen a color like that down here before. It’s all horrid old gray and black and that icky green sky.”

  “Could you take me there?” Demon asked eagerly.

  Eurydice made a face. “It’s a long way. And Arachne was quite mean to me last time I visited.”

  “We need to get spiderwebs from Arachne, anyway,” said Orpheus. “She’s only mean because she has all those arms and legs now. And we can take the shortcut past Lethe’s marsh. Come on, it’s important. Like a hero’s quest or something.”

  “Please,” begged Demon. He was very aware of the clock ticking away. He wriggled his toes uncomfortably.

  “Oh, all right,” said Eurydice. “I don’t mind Arachne really. But don’t blame me if Lethe gets you. She’s scary. We’ll have to try to go past very quietly without her noticing.”

  Sometime later, Demon was trying to ignore his grumbling stomach as they trudged along in silent single file along a squelchy gray path beside a marsh. He was so hungry he would have eaten dirt if someone had given him a plate of it. Don’t eat, don’t eat was the monotonous refrain that accompanied his heavy footsteps. There was almost no one around in this part of the Underworld, apart from the ever-present ghost bats. Demon liked bats. There’d been a colony near his home in Arcadia. As he craned his head upward, trying to listen to what they were saying, he tripped over his own feet and fell into the marshy water on his hands and knees. There was a sudden stink of old, unwashed socks.

  “Ugh,” he spluttered. Just as he began to scramble out, a bony hand grabbed his wrist, nails digging into his flesh like claws.

  “Not so fast,” said a harsh voice, bubbling up from the water. Eurydice moaned with terror and hid behind Orpheus, who was holding his lyre like a weapon. Demon shook his wrist over and over again, trying to get free, but it was no good. The hand had him in an iron grip. Then the marsh plopped and bubbled as a terrible figure rose out of it, draped with slimy gray waterweed robes.

  “What do we have here?” she snarled through a mouth full of sharp pointed teeth. “A half-mortal boy, two ghosts, and”—she peered over Demon’s shoulder—“a silver box with legs?”

  Demon’s heart was pounding like one of Hephaestus’s hammers. This must be Lethe, spirit of forgetfulness. “I-I-I’m sorry, Your Magnificent Marshiness,” he stuttered.

  Lethe smiled at him. It was not a nice smile. “Ohhhh! You WILL be,” she said. “You’ll be sorrier than a squashed scorpion.” She began to pull him down into the marsh. Demon felt himself begin to sink.

  “Noooo!” he wailed. “Orpheus, help me!”

  Right then Orpheus began to play his lyre. Then he began to sing. It was the saddest song Demon had ever heard. As the sorrowful notes wove around them, Lethe’s grip slackened, and Demon scrabbled backward toward the path. Fiery blue tears started to run down her cheeks and set the oily surface of the water aflame.

  “Ahh!” she sighed. “Now you’ve spoiled all my fun, Orpheus. You know I can’t resist your music.” Orpheus kept on playing as Demon hauled himself out and tried to scrape off the gray ooze as best he could. When Orpheus’s song came to an end, Lethe took a gliding step toward them through the burning water. Demon cowered. Eurydice was right. She was very scary, indeed.

  “Oh, do stop cringing, boy,” she said irritably. “Tell me why you were creeping past my marsh like a thief in the night.”

  Demon explained about Cerberus, his voice still trembling.

  “Very well,” said Lethe. “For Cerberus’s sake I will let you pass this time. But if you ever come this way again, I shall demand a price. I will take your most precious memory from you. It will not be a pleasant experience.”

  Demon nodded. He would have agreed to anything to get out of there. He’d just noticed that the sky had grown a little darker. How long did he have before his day ran out? Then he noticed that Lethe was holding a bunch of delicate five-petaled white flowers out to him. “You may need these,” she said.

  Behind him, the box opened its lid. “Insert floral items here, please,” it said, more polite than Demon had ever heard it. It was the grass-of-Parnassus that Demon needed for the potion, and now there were only three things left to find!

  As they left Lethe behind, Eurydice was full of how brave and clever Orpheus had been. She went on and on about it as Demon stumbled up the high rocky hills that led to Arachne’s cave. He wished she’d shut up, but he knew he needed her to show him Cerberus’s flowers, so he didn’t say so. Finally, as they came over one more summit, he saw a bright patch of yellow on the hillside below.

  “That’s them!” Eurydice cried when they were about halfway down.

  Demon raced down the hill, almost slipping in his eagerness, picked three yellow petals, and brought them back to the box, which was ready and waiting beside Orpheus and Eurydice.

  “Insert fl—”

  “I know,” said Demon. “Insert floral items here. I’m not stupid, you know.”

  “Could have fooled me,” muttered the box crossly, trailing along as they climbed higher and higher up the mountainside. Suddenly, Demon began to feel a stickiness under his feet. Schlurp schlap schlurp went his sandals. He looked down. Trails of thick slime covered the path.

  “What’s this?” he asked.

  “Hush,” said Eurydice. “You’ll soon see. But don’t mention it in front of Arachne. She doesn’t like to talk about it.” The stickiness got worse as they reached the entrance to Arachne’s cave, and now Demon could hear a regular clicking and clunking coming from inside.

  Orpheus rang a little bell by the entrance.

  “Who’s there?” said a silvery voice.

  “Orpheus and Eurydice,” said Orpheus. “And we’ve brought someone to see you.”

  “Come in then,” said Arachne. “And mind the tapestries.”

  As Demon stepped into the cave and saw what was inside, his eyes nearly bugged right out of his head. There crouched an enormous gray spider, her eight legs busy weaving on four different looms, shuttles flying faster than his eyes could follow. There was a mass of different-colored thread spooling out from her spinnerets, along with a lot of sticky stuff that covered the whole floor with a thick, gluey coating. What was even odder was that the spider had the face of a pretty girl.

  From each loom hung beautiful tapestries of all the gods and goddesses. There was Zeus with his thunderbolts, there was Hera, and there was Heffy at his forge. The pictures were all slightly irreverent, though. Zeus was wearing a silly hat, Hera was sitting backward on a donkey, and Heffy was using a chicken instead of a hammer.

  “Wow!” Demon said. “They’re amazing! You must be very brave to weave those!”

  It was just the right thing to say. Arachne beamed. “Ooh!” she squealed. “How nice of you to say so.” Then she frowned. “But how does a mortal boy come to be down here?”

  Demon explained abou
t Cerberus yet again. “All we need now are some spiderwebs,” he said. “And a Cauldron of Healing.”

  “Help yourself to webs,” said Arachne, gesturing with one spindly leg to the corner. “I have plenty to spare.” So Demon gathered up handfuls of the multicolored thread, getting himself hopelessly stuck together as he did so. The box clearly didn’t like having sticky feet, so it had taken to the air again, wings flapping. Orpheus and Eurydice huddled away from the gusts of air, trying to hold their bodies together, as two long mechanical arms appeared under the box’s wings and unraveled Demon, turning him around and around as it made the web strands into a neat rope.

  “Web item retrieved and stored to memory,” its tinny voice said.

  “Did you say you needed a Cauldron of Healing?” Arachne asked when he was slightly less stuck together.

  Demon nodded. “Do you know where I could find one down here?”

  “We-e-e-lll … ,” said Arachne slowly. “I’d normally send you up to Chiron the centaur in the mortal world. But down here …” She shook her head, and Demon’s heart sank into his sandals again.

  “Do you think Queen Persephone might have one?” Orpheus asked. “She’s a healer, isn’t she?”

  Suddenly Eurydice started jumping up and down. “You’re so clever, Orphy! I think I’ve seen one in her chambers,” she squealed. “That time Hades made me be her lady-in-waiting, remember? She made a potion in it to mend one of the Skeleton Guard’s arms.”

  “D-does that mean I have to go into Hades’s palace?” asked Demon, dreading the answer and wondering nervously what a Skeleton Guard was.

  “I’m afraid it does,” said Orpheus. “And I don’t think you’ve got much time left. Look!” He gestured at the cave entrance.

  Demon looked outside. It was much darker.

  “Two hours three minutes and twenty seconds, two hours three minutes and nineteen seconds, two hours three minutes and eighteen seconds,” the box chimed in helpfully.