Oathbound

by S W Clarke

  Encantado could breathe for a long time underwater, but not forever. We needed air after a half hour, and would die after forty-five minutes.

  But Cupid? Cupid’s lung capacity was probably about forty-five seconds.

  I’d like to say my last thought as we were sucked into the flume was a pretty or a noble one. I’d like to say it was of Justin, or Hercules or the goddess Yemoja. But those are only shower dreams, shower thoughts. You think of them afterward, all the things you should have said and done. What was right, what was good. What mattered to you.

  Instead, my thought was only this:

  Merda.

  ↔

  We went under.

  As I had suspected, we were sucked right into the flume running beneath the boulder. I tried to swim us up, but the current was more powerful than anything I’d experienced in the Amazon. Just like that, we were tumbling around and around and with a painful thud, we were swept into the river bed and under the rock.

  I wasn’t generally claustrophobic, but here at the bottom of things—all the sediment kicked up and obscuring my vision, water rushing at me with incredible force, pinned under a thousand pounds of stone—I panicked.

  We were stuck. Cupid and I were stuck.

  I wriggled to dislodge us, but it only lodged us more fully. My strength was quickly sapping, and I knew we only had a few minutes before I would be too weak—and Cupid would be too dead—for this to be anything but a tragedy.

  I needed time to think, but I had none. I was being slowly squeezed to death.

  Do something, Isa.

  Fix this.

  And because I didn’t know what else to do, I prayed to the gone gods. I hadn’t even believed in most of them when they were still around, but I prayed anyway.

  An answer came. Not from the gods, but from one of my sisters. Ananda was the best swimmer of us all, and I was the worst. But because she was my sister, one afternoon she shared her secret to being the best swimmer.

  Flow like water. Just flow like water.

  It sounded obvious, but it wasn’t.

  It meant I had to loosen every muscle in my body. It meant I had to let go, and flow with the water instead of against it.

  I’d spent a hundred years practicing flowing like water, and I could never do it like Ananda. But I didn’t need to be Ananda … I just had to get us out of here. That was all—just out from under the riverbottom of the Grand Canyon.

  Against every instinct, I let go. I loosened all my muscles, allowed the water to power us under the immensity of the boulder. I scraped along every inch of it, and Cupid right with me. I felt parts press and squeeze and break. I cried out, but I didn’t stiffen up.

  Flow like water.

  Just when I thought we would be buried under the boulder, the current dislodged us. We shot up the other side of it and popped up above the surface. Only one of my arms had the strength to pull Cupid close to me, and I did. I brought his face above the water and he floated atop me as we came into the stillness after the rapids.

  When I opened my eyes, the sun nearly ripped a hole in them. Had the world always been so bright? And because I had no strength left, I lay back and just breathed under the warmth of the sky.

  “Isa!” a voice yelled.

  Someone was wading into the river. A hand came around my chest, a warm body pressing up behind me, and water laced over Cupid and me as we were pulled along.

  “I think something’s broken,” I murmured as we were lifted up by that pair of arms and laid on hard ground. Beneath the adrenaline, I couldn’t feel my left arm.

  “Eros!” I heard one of the Cupids cry. “He’s blue.”

  A shadow fell over me, frigid coldness blocking the sun. I opened my eyes as the shivering began, and Hercules’s brown curls tickled my face as he lay his lionskin cloak over me.

  “Cupid,” I said. When I lifted my head, Justin was already kneeling over his prone form, compressing the tiny demigod’s chest with both hands.

  “You’re too large!” one of the Cupids exclaimed. “You’ll break his tiny bones. Allow us to do it.”

  In my half-aware state, I caught a glimpse of one of the Cupids bouncing up and down, using his wings for leverage.

  “You’re going to be OK,” Hercules said to me as he swept one hand under the back of my head to help me sit up. Only one of my arms responded; the other felt like a half-cleft tree branch. His body, hot as a brand, enveloped mine as he sat behind me, bracing me and and warming me at once. “You’ll both be OK.”

  I didn’t think I had any strength left in me, but I had the strength to cry. The tears blurred my vision as I watched the Cupids work.

  “Please,” Philia said. “He may be our little shit of a brother, but he’s our brother.”

  Agape lowered his mouth to Eros’s and blew in.

  This went on for thirty seconds or a minute until I lost track of time. But it was there in the Grand Canyon, when Cupid finally spat up a lungful of water and sucked in air—“Oh,” cried Philia. “He’s alive! Eros is alive”—that I slipped into a delirium.

  And in that delirium, I felt only gratitude and love.

  I loved Justin—really, truly. I thought I had before, but I hadn’t. Not truly. At first I’d loved him because I sensed he was good. I sensed he would do the right thing. I’d loved him on the promise of who he was.

  But I’d never been certain. He would do a wonderful thing and a dangerous thing. He would kiss me and then threaten to kill a man like Daiski.

  Now, as he came to kneel in front of me, I knew it wasn’t the promise of him I loved. It was Justin. But it was more than that.

  “You’re safe now,” Hercules whispered in my ear. As I slowly warmed against his bare skin, he stroked my cheek with one finger. That finger was capable of incredible destruction, and—as I was discovering—an achingly delicate touch.

  I loved the promise of Hercules, too. The encompassing safety of his arms. The cocksure way he stepped up to any challenge. His bellowing laughter. His merciful touch.

  And, last and strangest of all, I realized I loved the promise of who I could be. The Isabella who saved her Cupid’s life. The Isabella who gave love as well as she got it. The Isabella who looked up at Justin, who looked back down at her, and said, “I’m so happy you’re all right.”

  For the first time, I had the sense that I could be her.

  Silence fell, and I sensed something wordless passing between Justin and Hercules. Something very bad had happened … I could tell in the way Justin’s eyes kept returning to my left arm.

  He pulled off his jacket, threw it aside so he could take his shirt off. He ripped off a long strip in a hurry.

  “What happened?” I whispered, trying to look at what Justin was doing. I willed my left arm into movement, and then the rest of me, struggling my way out of Hercules’s lion skin cape. But that was cut short by pain like I’d never felt in my arm. All the way down to the elbow.

  I couldn’t feel below the elbow.

  “I can’t feel my hand,” I whispered. “Why can’t I feel my hand?”

  Hercules’s biceps were so large I couldn’t see past them. He kept a tight hold on me. “Shush,” Hercules said to me. “Be still.”

  “It’s too much blood to heal with magic,” Justin murmured. “It’s way too much.”

  “I’ll call my puff to ferry her,” Agape said. A second later, he let out a shrill whistle.

  Nothing happened.

  “Oh, come on,” the little Cupid said. Agape whistled again, louder and longer. After a few seconds, something long and flat slid from the sky and slowly made its way down to where Agape stood.

  “Not again,” Agape groaned.

  “What is that?” Justin asked.

  “Do we have the pump?” Agape asked Philia.

  “No,” Philia said quietly.

  Agape groaned even more loudly. “How could we forget the pump?”

  “What pump?” Justin asked.

  Instead of answe
ring him, Agape and Philia began arguing in hushed tones. It sounded like Agape was berating Philia. At the end, Philia flew over to us. “The only option is the ninja’s watch.”

  “The ninja’s watch?” Justin repeated.

  Philia began rifling through the backpacks. “Do you still have the watch?”

  “Daiski’s watch?” Justin turned around, grabbed his backpack. “It’s in here.”

  “The red button,” Philia said. “We need to hit that one.”

  Agape flew over. “The red button?”

  “To save her,” Philia said.

  The red button. That meant Daiski. That meant the World Army. “No,” I said, starting up. “No, you can’t do that.”

  Hercules growled. “I warn you now: if you send for them, they’ll find the wide end of my club a harsh mistress.”

  “It has to be done,” Philia said. “The puffs won’t carry her right now, and you saw all the desert around this place.”

  “Philia’s right,” Justin said. “If we activate the watch, they’ll come for us with cars and maybe helicopters. They’re invested in keeping Isa alive—at least until Russo gets what she wants from her.”

  Hercules inhaled, preparing to speak. Then he let a long, audible sigh. “Isabella,” Hercules said into my ear, “trust me, I do not wish for this. I would continue the battle for as long as necessary, but if it comes down to winning the fight or saving your life, I will always choose the latter.”

  Saving my life. So it was that serious. Some part of me sensed as much, though I didn’t know if I wanted to know the real extent of my injuries. I was glad for Hercules’s binding arms.

  Justin let out a long sigh. “He’s right. If I don’t do it, you won’t make it, Isa. And I can’t lose you.”

  I nodded. “All right,” I rasped, my consciousness slipping. “Thank you,” I said before lapsing into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  Chapter 16

  I had never been rocked by the goddess Yemoja, my mother. In fact, I had no memory of her holding me in her arms except in the first moment of my life. My time as an encantado began after an endless void—the darkness of non-existence. And then I simply was.

  I was a young woman, and I lived in the Amazon rainforest.

  But I have been rocked by sound. Lulled by it.

  One of my favorite memories is of opening my eyes to a woman’s wordless singing in the morning light. There beside me sat a beautiful woman, cross-legged and naked but for the dark hair raining over her shoulders and down her chest. Ananda. She sometimes sang, and beautifully.

  She smiled at me. “Isa.”

  “Don’t stop,” I said.

  So she didn’t. And though I had never been rocked like a baby—though I only knew the concept of it, the theory, the sight of a mother holding her child in the curve of her arms, I felt completely comforted by her voice. Rocked to sleep.

  Right now, I was literally being rocked under the slanting sun. I recognized the deep and infinite comfort of it. I imagined I was in a mother’s arms, and she was singing to me.

  Except her voice wasn’t a woman’s at all. It was a boy’s, and far more beautiful.

  The boy’s song was punctuated by a long, low bray.

  Was that a GoneGodDamn donkey?

  And something was tickling my nose.

  My eyes opened. Sunlight poured through the interstices of the brown curls so close to my nose. They’d been pulled back, but one had escaped and now taunted me with a feather touch over my face.

  I was pressed against someone’s body, but it wasn’t a woman’s. It was too large, too hard with muscle. Too intoxicating with scent—the most potent man’s musk that had never been distilled into a bottle.

  My arm was wrapped around him, the rest of me pressed to his body inside his lionskin cape. I lifted my head off his shoulder, and the rocking stopped.

  “Hercules?”

  His cheek dimpled as he smiled, his green eyes full on me. He carried a sadness in his gaze. “Welcome back.”

  The singing stopped, too. “Oh, she’s awake!”

  That was my Cupid’s voice. He was alive.

  His hovering face appeared in my vision. Justin’s, too. My head pounded with all the noise, the heat, the disorientation.

  “Isa,” Justin said, “drink this.”

  I accepted the hard rim of a water bottle between my lips, drank greedily. Water escaped down my face, but I didn’t stop. Not until it was gone.

  “Where are we?” I said, but my eyes were already drifting past them. A few feet off rose a sheer and muddy-colored rock face. I could almost see over the side of it—we were close to the top. And left of that, a donkey on an incline, my backpack and Justin’s lashed over his back.

  So I hadn’t imagined the braying. I tried to lift my hand to point at the donkey, but even the impulse to move sent pain through me. I knew I was in a bad way.

  “We’re very nearly there,” Hercules said as he kept walking. “You will get the help you need soon, Isabella.”

  I closed my eyes, a sudden wave of dizziness rolling over me. Maybe I passed out again, because when I opened them, Hercules had stopped moving. I had heard a voice that wasn’t his or Justin’s or the Cupids’.

  And my next thought: the red button. Daiski. The World Army.

  “Did you call them?” I croaked. “The World Army?”

  “They most certainly did,” replied that voice. A musical tenor. Daiski’s voice. “Go ahead and set the encantado down, demigod.”

  ↔

  “She stays with us,” Hercules growled.

  It was early evening, and I knew we were out of the canyon because a breeze was in the trees around us. How had we gotten out? The donkey brayed again as though in answer. Had Hercules carried me up the side of the Grand Canyon? He must have.

  “Let me rephrase,” Daiski said. I heard the click of automatic weapons. “Put her down or I’ll teach you how long it takes you to die of a bullet to the gut.”

  Hercules did as asked, gently lowering me to the hard ground with both hands. His cloak was still wrapped around me. When he rose, Hercules stood with his knuckles popping white underneath the skin.

  He was furious.

  Justin’s voice spoke now, the general sound of it becoming comprehensible words. “You’ll die if you shoot him,” he said. His words echoed out across the canyon. “I can promise you that.”

  Daiski laughed. It was his laugh and it wasn’t. It was his laugh overlaid with something else—a haughtiness, a surety. “You want to test that?”

  “We don’t want to test your mettle. We know how powerful you are.” A woman. I knew that voice. I knew it from life and dreams—so many nightmares about her in the past six months—better than almost any woman’s. “You’re Hercules, aren’t you?”

  Hercules lifted a finger to point at her. “I’ve seen you.”

  The pain was overwhelming, but I lifted my head anyway. I needed to see to know for sure. My eyes drifted from the early evening sky on down to the trees and finally to the people before us.

  There she stood, black-haired and serene. Serena Russo. Here at the edge of things.

  Beside her, Daiski.

  Behind them, a whole lot of automatic rifles raised and aimed. More tactical vests than I could count.

  “I’ve seen you, too.” Serena’s crystal-blue eyes shifted from Hercules to me. When they met my gaze, I nearly flinched. But she bore no hardness. Only a dreadful longing. “I’ve seen you all.”

  Above me, I knew Hercules had lowered his eyes. “I will kill them if you like, Isa.”

  I knew by his tone that he meant it.

  “Where are the Cupids?” I said.

  “We’re here,” came my Cupid’s voice from behind me. I raised to my right elbow with gritted teeth. They stood in a line, all three bows nocked and raised with the Arizona landscape and the canyon beyond.

  “You came a long way to end things,” Justin said. I looked back around, found him standing not two
feet left of me.

  “End things?” Serena raised a placating hand. “I’m a geneticist. We don’t work to end things—we work to understand them. To perpetuate them.”

  Beside her, I sensed Daiski staring at me. He had laughed so haughtily, and yet his look bore none of that. He was the man on the train. And yet that cane was in his left hand. In his other, a handgun.

  I didn’t know why this decision was mine to make. All these lives, all this death.

  “Then perpetuate them,” Justin shot back. “Isabella needs help. Urgently.”

  For the first time, I ventured a look at my left arm. It had been wrapped so well in clothing that it looked three times its size, and yet I understood. The horror of it was almost too much. I opened my mouth, and no words came.

  My hand was gone.

  After five hundred years of having two arms and immortality, I now had one. I was mortal. I had understood this as a concept after the gods left, and I thought I’d fully processed the new truth of my life, but I hadn’t.

  I was mortal, and I could die.

  Not just could—would.

  I would die.

  The incomprehensibility of such a thing was interrupted by Serena, whose casualness would have suited an office break room. “I can fix that. But you all need to lower your weapons first. And then you’re going to be good boys and come with me.”

  Justin spat in the dust. “Fuck you.”

  “The problem with vulgarities is how brittle they are. Full of insecurity.” Daiski crouched, his eyes seeking mine. When he found them, he smiled. “I told you what I promised would happen if I found you in my right mind.”

  He would kill them all. He would kill them and take me.

  Through the morass of my horror, a certainty crept in: I could bear being taken, but I couldn’t bear their deaths.

  “Don’t fight,” I whispered.

  “What?” Hercules said.

  “Don’t fight,” I repeated. “If we fight, you’ll die.”

  “I’ve died once,” Hercules said. “And I will again.”

  “Not for me,” I said. “First, you have to avenge a great wrong.”