“I think not, though you may trust I came prepared. Now do you regret my presence?” My father slid the coin back inside his clenched fist as Hund trotted across the sand to the dock. I chose not to respond to his bait, for Charon’s ferry had nearly arrived, and once the man himself sailed into view, my stomach lurched. I fought the urge to turn and flee. The ferryman stood at the bow holding a long oar to steer, and a lantern hung at the stern. The boat looked too small to carry more than one or two living souls at a time, but most alarming was the ferryman’s appearance.
His posture was stooped, and though he wore a thick, ragged cloak around his shoulders, he looked old and frail enough to shatter at a touch. His hair was bright white, bluish in the cavern’s light, and the scraggly beard on his chin—if it could even be called a beard—looked the same. What struck a sudden fear into my heart, however, were his eyes, red and flickering like flames. I had seen those flames before. Those were the flames I sought, but I would not find their source here on the shores of Acheron.
The boat slid against the dock and Hund sat on his haunches, regarding me with anticipation. I strode forward and approached the ferryman, chills sliding across my skin as the waiting spirits brushed against my palm. They didn’t recoil or turn angry eyes upon me or my father as I’d feared, which was just as well. They hadn’t yet learned we could call them forth from their resting peace. For a fleeting moment I wondered, down here in the depths, what of those powers? Would they mean anything at all?
I stood by Hund and the beast nudged my leg as if to encourage me. Had he sensed how my legs had begun to shake as I neared the ferryman? It wouldn’t do. I’d faced down demons and monsters and lived to tell the tale, and surely there were greater horrors awaiting us on Acheron’s far shore.
Why did I tremble so in the ferryman’s presence? Because, I know now, he held my fate. If he refused us passage, our search for my mother would end before it had begun, and we would have to return to the living and to William’s father. Journeying through the underworld seemed preferable.
That is, until the ferryman spoke, lips unmoving, his voice scraping like a sharp rock pressed against a glass pane.
“Living souls,” he said. “Why have you come? Woe to you who seek the other shore. There may be naught but eternal shadows—heat that will melt the flesh from your bones, cold that will freeze the breath in your lungs. You have come this far, but you cannot cross.”
His eyes glowed, burning embers flaring brighter as my father proffered his coin. “We have the requisite payment. You will take us across.”
“This is no place for living souls. Many have tried. All have failed.”
“Most have failed,” I corrected. “Not all. Hercules. Orpheus. Dante. I know as well as you that death cannot always hold the dead, nor can it keep out the living.”
“Those of whom you speak, they may have survived the descent, but they returned changed. You proceed at your own peril. None can enter and leave untouched by this place.”
His speech, so grave and forbidding, caused a peal of laughter to burst from my lips. Inappropriate, but could he not see? “My father and I are already touched by this place, and willingly so.” I turned to William, who stood resolute. His golden talisman gleamed in the darkness, and his companions hovered protectively at his sides. If anyone could emerge unchanged, I believed it was him.
How easy it is to believe the lies we tell ourselves.
Charon regarded our party, then turned his fiery gaze on Hund. “I suppose you’re uniquely equipped. You’ve already tamed one guardian. Who is to say the rest won’t also fall at your feet?” I felt a surge of pride. I had tamed this beast, somehow. Could I also compel others? Perhaps. And if not, surely heaven’s favor, carried by the paladins in their respective talismans, would quell any uprising.
“May we board?” I wished to waste no more time. Charon turned away in silence and extended his hand, palm up, to my father, who pressed his coin and five others—one for each of us—into the ferryman’s ragged glove. My father boarded first, followed by Peter, Lorenz, and Samia.
William, once aboard, addressed me with concern. “The way forward is set from here on, yes? It will be too late to turn back.”
It would, indeed. I followed him in, Hund at my side, and we shifted places until we were all seated, knees touching. With us inside, the boat looked larger than it had when it arrived. Had its size increased to hold us? Was nothing as it appeared in this desolate realm?
“I’m not afraid,” I lied.
“Neither am I,” William lied in return.
We both knew the other spoke falsely, but we were too terrified to care. Charon dipped his oar into the black waters, and we began to glide away from the ghost-filled shore. The oars made scarcely a sound as they dipped and lifted, the drops of water falling in silence on the river’s dark surface. No one spoke, and all too soon we no longer saw the dock or the shore on which we’d stood minutes before. Or had it been hours? Surrounded by black waters, nothingness above and on either side, we had no way to note the passage of time. After what felt like a lifetime of aimless meandering, a dim light appeared in the distance that soon took shape as another dock. It had the same simple form as the dock on the other shore, but a lamp mounted at its end—much like the lamp at the far end of the ferry—ensured we would neither miss nor crash into it. As we came closer, a flash of lightning illuminated the space around us.
I saw only more darkness beyond that in which we sailed.
More flashes lit the way, but not a single thunderous rumble broke the silence. We met the dock and disembarked, standing all with trepidation at its edge.
“How should we proceed?” asked Lorenz, and I thought he spoke to Charon—but when I looked back, the ferryman’s boat had already gone, no doubt gliding away in pursuit of his next fare. For what did a ferryman of the dead use his coins, I wondered? Did he eat or sleep? Were the coins a payment to someone else in exchange for long life here in the underworld, if indeed one could call such a bleak existence “life” at all? I might have suggested waiting, to ask and learn if we might be able to help Charon by our own power, had William not called my name.
“What is it?” He’d crossed the dock and stood on a beach much like the one from which we’d come, only smaller and lacking in ghostly figures. Whomever Charon had ferried before us was long gone. William looked down, as though gazing into a hole in the earth, and his attending companions joined him. Peter stumbled back, head shaking.
I glanced at my father, who appeared stoic and unmoved by events thus far. I admired his erect posture and fixed gaze. I would strive for the same. I strode to meet William, who flung out a protective arm before I reached him. “Be careful,” he warned. “There’s a way down, but I’d rather you didn’t enter it head-first.”
I took care to look. We were on the brink, at the height of a valley that plummeted down and down and down, too dark and deep and clouded to discern anything in its depths. A mist rose from its center, and the path we were to follow sloped inward, ringing the central void.
“Nowhere to go but down,” said Samia, and she spoke truth. “Shall we proceed?”
Lorenz strode along the edge of the beach, peering down as well. “We should descend one at a time, as we did on the stairs.”
“To where?” Peter raised his hands in protest. “We don’t know what’s down there and we can’t see a thing.”
“It’s no different from the stairs,” Lorenz countered.
William frowned at his friend. “Why do you nurse cowardice in your heart? We’ve come this far. I don’t intend to turn back, and even if we wanted to, how would we return?”
“We’ll have to return eventually,” Peter said. “Or have you all forgotten to account for that? We need a way out.”
“We’ll find a way,” William said, clasping his friend’s shoulder. “But you’re free to remain behind at any time. I, however, choose to go forward.” My heart warmed as
William gazed at me with a small, knowing smile—and then he began to descend, choosing to be the first to step onto the path.
We followed, for what else were we to do? But the first descent didn’t take us more than a short jaunt down a narrow and rocky stretch, the path expelling us onto an expanse of land that widened as it flattened beneath our feet.
We heard them before we saw them, those souls who had made their journey from shore to shore, proceeding along the path to their eternal rest. They sighed endlessly, the sound of grief without torture … and then, there they were. Crowds of people, infants and the elderly, women and men, neither blessed nor condemned, traveling the path to eternity. They simply were.
Sorrow tugged at my heart, seeing so many there. How long had my mother spent in this dreary desolation? I couldn’t even see the landscape, so crowded was it with those who awaited judgment. Some stood, some sat, some lay down. Hund led the way as we walked slowly in single file through the crowds, trying to jostle as few as possible. The beast padded along the earth with the confidence of one who knows where he’s going.
My mother wasn’t among them. I knew that. I knew it well. Still, I searched the faces for her as we passed, wondering whether I might see another soul I recognized. In this place, I found my spirit soothed and my fear lessened. These souls, much like those on the beach, were waiting. Only waiting. How many times had I waited for Father to return from a business trip? How many times had I waited for William to bring news of our wedding? How many times had I sat in the dark, inside a circle of my own making, and waited for a spirit’s arrival? I had grown used to waiting, and it was not as bad as all that. For many, certainly the wait was preferable to what they faced after judgment.
Slowly and steadily we proceeded until finally the sea parted and we realized we had once again begun to descend. When this path levelled out and set us on a new, flat plane for the third time that day, it began.
The hesitation. The uncertainty. The fear.
For before we could proceed any further, we had to face the judge.
15
The Want
An iron archway rose before us, a boundary marker for what waited on the other side. The black metal had been worked into ornate curls and twists reminiscent of overgrown vines. It made the arch look beautiful and delicate rather than foreboding.
Inside the arch’s gap, a horned creature blocked the way, half-man and half- … well, this was a curious sight. His arms and chest were bare, pale from a life without sunlight, and his feet were unclad. Across his midsection he wore a scrap of cloth not unlike the rags worn by Charon, but none of these things surprised me as greatly as his face. He looked human, with oval eyes, a wide mouth, and white beard and hair, but his ears were like those of a donkey. I speak no jest: they were tall, thin, and tufted. Before I could introduce our party, what I had presumed to be a rope wound about his person uncoiled.
I nearly lost the small bit of bread and cheese I’d consumed hours before. The man had no rope. It was a tail, long and serpent-like, that wound in coils around his bare flesh.
He bristled and snarled as we grew closer, and a rushing cold passed through my bones. It felt as though someone had begun to dig inside my skull, prying open secret places and peering into my darkest deeds—and most precious memories. A spike of pain tore through the space behind my eyes and I clutched my forehead, crying out.
“Enough!” William pulled me upright, and I saw that we all appeared to suffer the same ailment. “What are you doing? Stop at once, can’t you see you’re hurting us?”
But the ache only grew, and I doubled over, hands pressed to my knees as a thread of memory was pulled to the surface: the night I rushed home from visiting my mother’s stone and found Edward ill and abed, having learned that I had caused it. My deeds had made him suffer.
I screamed and stood, straining to draw on a thread of power. “Leave us be!”
The man-beast stumbled backward as though I’d pushed him with bare hands—but I hadn’t touched anything besides my aching temples. Hund stood at the front of our party, teeth bared and growling. He snapped his jaw and the gatekeeper huffed, tail twitching.
“You’re not dead,” he said. “You cannot be here.”
“We bought passage fairly from Charon. We’ll proceed as we wish.” William took my hand and squeezed, and I nodded in return. The pain inside my head had vanished. “We’re here to retrieve a misplaced soul.”
The gatekeeper stared at us, and for a moment I wondered if he’d understood—but then his massive shoulders settled, and he lifted his face toward the path and began to laugh. It was my turn to bristle, for how could he find our plight a laughing matter?
“I beg your pardon, sir.” Anger bubbled up to replace my confusion, but I swallowed it down. Most of it. “But we’ve come far and have no wish to delay you in your duties. Allow us to pass through this gate and we’ll bother you no further. I might also inquire if you know where to find the spirit we seek, but since you’ve already violated our persons and mocked our efforts, I’m disinclined to trust your answer.”
“Good day to you as well, girl. I’m Minos, gatekeeper and soul judge.” He huffed once more and leaned forward, bending his massive frame to meet my gaze on the level. “And if it’s a specific soul you seek, I’ll know where to find them, because I sent them there.”
“You?”
“Yes, I.” His tail flung forward and we all jumped back, save Hund, who merely stamped his paws with impatience. “I judge the souls of the condemned. My will determines the soul’s place beyond this arch.”
“Any place seems undesirable. I shall never understand why anyone requires further judgment. Heaven’s way is open to all the blessed, why isn’t the same true of hell and the condemned?”
Minos’s laugh lacked humor, and I wished I had never heard it. “Would you place a murderer and a thief under lock and key for the same duration as punishment for their crimes? Condemn both glutton and adulterer to matching fates?”
I shifted from foot to foot in discomfort, for it didn’t seem that these questions were meant to be answered.
“Even the blessed receive jewels in their crown according to good deeds. Why shouldn’t it be the same for the wicked?”
William cleared his throat, fingers brushing his medallion. “I believe that the Almighty judges the living and the dead, not you.”
“Believe what you wish, boy, but once your Creator has deemed a soul’s fate to lie in this place, the responsibility shifts hands. Whose fault is that? Perhaps the soul should have acted with greater care during its life. Now, step aside—the dead proceed, and I cannot judge you.”
As he spoke, three ghostly spirits floated down the path we’d traveled: an elderly man, a small child, and a woman. I assumed that the child would be spared. What could a child do to be sent to this place and not to heaven’s shining gates?
Minos regarded the elderly man for a moment, the same way he’d regarded us when we first approached. The spirit did not react, however—perhaps the lack of a true physical body meant no pain, or perhaps he was simply resigned to the inevitable. And then Minos’s tail lashed out, whipping around his form three times. Only then was there a reaction—I sensed trepidation and relief from the spirit, who stepped through the archway and proceeded down yet another darkened path. As he walked, his limbs became less ghostly and blurred, taking on firmer substance.
“Where is he going? What’s beyond this arch?” I had not meant to speak it aloud, and only realized I had once Minos answered.
“To the third circle,” he replied, but said no more as the child approached. His tail lashed again, coiling nine times around his form. The child proceeded under the arch, and Minos indulged my curiosity. “Caina, at the rim of Cocytus. The ninth circle.”
“Cocytus?” William spoke the word with revulsion. “You send a child to burn in the pit of eternal hellfire while you send an old man to an easy existence?”
/> Minos’s eyes blazed. “That child murdered his parents and three sisters with a smelter’s hammer. And you might not be so quick to dismiss an eternity in the third circle if you were condemned there.”
I had heard and seen enough. Time would slip away too easily if we remained overlong in one place. “Minos, we appreciate your patience, but we seek to retrieve the spirit of my mother, Aleidis. I know she used to dwell in heaven, but something terrible has happened and I’ve come to search for her. Do you know where she might be? Did she pass this way?”
Minos’s tail unwound and lay on the ground in a heap. A brief shadow crossed his face. “She did not pass this way, no, and I fear that you proceed on a journey of folly. You won’t find her here.”
“But you know of her.” It wasn’t a question. “You know where to find her.”
He lowered his eyes to regard each of us in turn, finally settling them on me. “I’m sorry, little necromancer. But your mother has crossed the Styx and is beyond your reach. Even you dare not go, for those who cross the Styx never return.”
Again, the lies. “Hercules. Dante. Orpheus.”
“Are you an Orpheus, girl? You seek Eurydice, but she’ll turn back and crumble to dust before you reach daylight.”
“No fate is certain.”
“Maybe not. But I’ve guarded this path for over a thousand years. Who knows better who comes and goes than I? Who has seen many try, and watched nearly all heroes fall?”
I smiled then, for I knew what I had that they did not. “I’m no hero. I’m a woman who knows her heart and mind, and I’ve sent countless demons back to the pit with my strength and will. I bring spirits forth to do my bidding and then release them back to their eternal rest. That is why I will do this and succeed.”
He shook his head and yet stepped aside to make way. “Ah, but that, little necromancer, is why I believe you won’t.”
The image of my hands coated in my stepsisters’ blood as I held their blackened, beating hearts rose to the forefront of memory. I shuddered to recall the sensation of sticky, congealed blood between my fingers, and looked up to see Minos baring his teeth in a terrifying smile, as though he knew my thoughts.
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