Underworld's Daughter

by Molly Ringle

Hekate touched her tall new body, then turned and seized her polished bronze hand mirror from the wall niche where it resided. Its reflection was always a bit fuzzy, especially in only the light of an oil lamp. But it was clear she had changed. She had become a woman.

  “So apparently,” her grandmother’s arch voice said, “that’s what the fruit does when you give it to a child. You look well indeed, Hekate.”

  Hekate looked at the entrance to her chamber. Demeter leaned there, hand on her hip, smiling.

  Hermes darted into view too, and stopped to stare. His eyes expanded in pleased surprise. “Now that,” he said, “is much better than staying twelve forever.” He bowed to her. “Good morning, Hekate.”

  Hades grimaced at him. “Only you could make ‘Good morning’ sound so disgusting.”

  Hekate looked in the mirror again, then back at Hermes, who was looking her up and down in a way she’d only seen men look at grown-up women. Was that how men were going to look at her from now on? Rather exciting. If strange.

  “She’s even lovelier than you, Hades,” Hermes remarked, “and you know how much I fancy you.”

  “Must you be here?” her father asked him.

  Hekate smacked the mirror down. “I’d never fancy you,” she retorted to Hermes. “And if you ever try to kiss me, I’ll—I’ll keep a snake hidden in my clothes and make it bite you. On the lips. And on both ears.”

  “See, your threats are still age twelve,” Hermes said. “I’ll help you work on that.”

  “Hermes,” Persephone said, a laugh rippling her voice, “will you please carry the news to the others? I’d like them to hear it directly, before rumors spread.”

  “Happily.”

  “We may have some irritated parties to deal with,” Hades said, “but on the whole I think they’ll be pleased.” He strolled up to his daughter and reached for her.

  The love on his face melted her. She leaped into his hug. He grunted, falling back a step. “Yes, you’re certainly stronger. And taller.” He let her go and set his hand atop his head, then moved it straight out, where it brushed the top of hers.

  “She’s as tall as you,” Persephone said in wonder.

  Hades laughed, amazed, and kissed Hekate on the forehead. He had to tip his face up to do it.

  “Will you all please let me bathe and have breakfast now?” Hekate complained. “I’m starving. And my robes are disgusting.”

  They obliged. Everyone kissed her one more time before dashing off. Only Persephone and Kerberos stayed, and accompanied her through the tunnels on the way to the rivers. The cold stone floors tingled against her bare feet. The stalagmites sent up sparks at the brush of her fingertips. All of it invisible, of course, but she sensed the magic like never before. It roamed the air like shreds of mist, and thrummed in the earth and rocks.

  She threw off her sweat-stained tunic and climbed into their designated bathing spot, a pool in a small tributary to the main river. The current moved gently here and the water was only shoulder-deep. Or at least, last time she had bathed, it had been shoulder-deep. Today it was only waist-deep. Hekate smiled in surprise at that, and folded her legs to sink down and rinse her hair while her mother collected her discarded tunic and carried it downstream to wash it.

  The Underworld’s water magic had always shimmered around Hekate in this bath, wrapping her in comfort despite the chill. Today the shimmer became almost an audible song. Tipping her head to watch the reflected torchlight waver on the stalactites, Hekate swished her arm back and forth beneath the water, finding the currents and aligning them into a vibrant thread.

  Persephone paused in squeezing out the garments, and lifted her head. “That sounds like bells. Do you hear that?”

  “It’s the water. I’m making it sing.”

  Her mother listened with a frown to the chiming jingle. It danced at the edge of hearing, within the chatter of the water. Hekate demonstrated with an extra flourish of her hand, which caused a louder surge of bells.

  Her mother looked at her in astonishment. “Have you always been able to do that?”

  “No. Not until today.” In joyous harmony with the world, Hekate closed her eyes and floated.

  Walking from the bus stop to the university office where she worked, Zoe glanced aside from behind her sunnies at a stretch of grass between buildings. A mother and a little girl peered up into a tree, the mother tugging at a string. Above them, wedged between branches, was their kite, green and frog-shaped with a long yellow tail.

  “I know, sweetie, but I don’t want to break the string,” the mother apologized to the little girl.

  Zoe slowed beneath the tree and stretched her fingers out to the trunk.

  The tree’s magic hummed there, pliable and aloof. She detected the currents of the wind too, gentle today but easy to pull together and direct into a new gust.

  With the tiniest expansion of her fingers, she seized the magic and twisted. In one northerly gust, coinciding with a cooperative bend of the twigs, the tree released the kite. The frog swooped out and nose-dived harmlessly to the ground. Mother and child cheered and ran to collect it.

  Zoe walked onward, smiling.

  Hekate climbed out of her bathing pool and dressed in clean garments. Her parents approached from the direction of the fields, and Persephone handed her a pomegranate. Magic throbbed from within its tough red skin. Hekate knew at once it wasn’t a usual fruit, and must be from her mother’s orchards.

  “If you’re going to be grown up and immortal,” Persephone said, “then you’d best eat this. It’s the quickest way to make your mind catch up.” She smiled, though her eyes remained solemn. “I’m happy for all the knowledge you’ll gain, but sorry we had to abandon your childhood so quickly.”

  Excitement pulsed in Hekate’s chest. She sliced into the pomegranate with her thumbnail. “But this’ll give me memories of lots of other childhoods, won’t it?”

  “It will,” her father said. “Plenty of unpleasant memories too. It’s why so few of the others have wanted to eat it.”

  “They’re cowards, then.” Hekate ripped free a section of fruit. Seeds fell loose and bounced off her wet bare feet. She shook some of the red gems into her palm, tipped them into her mouth, and chewed and swallowed. “Mm. These are even better than the ones from above ground, Mother.”

  “Now you can eat them whenever you like, I suppose,” Persephone said, still wearing her poignant smile.

  “When does it start working?” Hekate asked.

  “Probably not until later today, or tonight,” her father said. “Not till you sleep again, and dream.”

  “Oh well. I’ll explore other magic today, then.” She ate another handful of seeds. “Who else has eaten the pomegranate? Hermes, I know.”

  “Him, and Aphrodite too,” her father said. “Athena and Rhea did as well. Prometheus said he’d like to, but he hasn’t come down here to do it so far.”

  Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus were fairly new immortals, both brave and honest as far as Hekate had seen, but Prometheus did strike her as the more inquisitive of the two, the likelier to seek wisdom such as these seeds could give.

  “None of the others yet,” Hades added.

  “Cowards,” Hekate echoed, in playful sing-song.

  Her father smiled, transforming his somber bearded face into that of a young man’s. “Compared to you, most people are indeed.”

  Her parents returned to their duties of speaking to the newly dead and bringing messages above ground, and also kept looking into any assistance they could offer against the plague. It still raged up there, killing people, while Hekate roamed safe and alive—in fact immortal now—in the Underworld.

  She spent the day exploring the fields and orchards in a strange mix of sadness for the plight of others and delight at her own fortune. Persephone told her she still shouldn’t eat anything growing in the Underworld without asking first, but she was allowed to touch the plants now and see what magic might lie within them, if Hekate could
indeed read such things.

  She certainly could. Touching all the different fruits and leaves and roots that day was like opening a box of paints in colors she had never seen before. It was too much to comprehend in one day. Mastering all this magic was going to take loads of practice.

  But when she reached the graceful tree with the glossy leaves, and closed her hand around one of the orange-skinned fruits, the newly strong blood in her veins pulsed in recognition and harmony. This was it, then: the fruit of immortality. She had suspected it already. Her mother had always been vague about what this tree did, saying it had “a type of healing medicine,” but never picking it and using it on patients, as far as Hekate ever saw. She smiled to have discovered the secret, then left the fruits alone and wandered off, Kerberos trotting beside her.

  She strolled out of the orchard and onto the path that took her around the hills. When the river’s edge came into view at a bend in the path, she stopped.

  He was back. Adonis. The beautiful man. Hekate’s heart began thumping as if she’d been running, though she stood perfectly still. Didn’t poets, and the dead souls too, talk about that kind of reaction when they described love?

  Hekate couldn’t love Adonis. She barely knew him. But her heart smacked its silly rhythm against her ribs all the same, and she had to acknowledge a certain magic in that reaction too—a magic any human could experience.

  She studied the cause of this madness as he stood before her.

  As before, Aphrodite had come with him, her arm linked in his. Adonis looked weary, shoulders drooping beneath his dark green cloak. He spoke to the soul of an older woman, and periodically wiped his eyes on a scrap of cloth. Hekate walked forward quietly. As she drew near she saw that not only was he crying, but he was ill. The same sores that had flamed all over her own body yesterday stood out now on his bare arms, and he coughed, and winced when he did so. She winced too—she remembered the knife-like feeling of that cough in her chest.

  The older woman, now dead, had fair hair like him, and his serious, splendid eyes. His mother, then, hadn’t survived the plague despite Persephone’s medicines.

  Aphrodite spotted Hekate, and after a squeeze of Adonis’ arm, she left him with his mother and walked over to take Hekate’s hands in greeting. At her touch, Hekate felt a surge of goodwill—the love and joy Aphrodite spread through the world. Maybe she left envy and longing in her wake rather too often, but her intentions were good; Hekate felt sure of that.

  Aphrodite gazed at her. “My dear. You’re enchanting—you’re tall! Is it even you? How did this happen? Some new magic of your mother’s, I assume.”

  “The immortality fruit,” Hekate said. “I would’ve died last night, they said, so…” She shrugged. At the moment, she really didn’t care much about being immortal. But being grown up and shapely—would Adonis notice that about her? Her gaze slipped back to him. No, he wouldn’t today, nor for a while yet. He was plunged in grief. Her heart ached for him.

  Aphrodite glanced over her shoulder at him, then returned a grave look to Hekate. “Both his parents died. His father three days ago, his mother last night. I promised to bring him to see her.”

  Hekate looked around. “Where’s his father?”

  Aphrodite’s voice turned acerbic. “The other place, I suspect. He was not a good man.”

  “Oh.” Tartaros’ magic was much too strong for Hekate to break; that she knew. She couldn’t release a soul locked there, not before the Fates’ assigned time. She studied Adonis, who was nodding miserably in response to something his mother was saying, as if trying to be brave for her. He coughed again. “He’s ill too,” Hekate said.

  “Yes. I’m keeping a close eye on him.” Worry lowered Aphrodite’s dark eyebrows as she surveyed the masses of souls. “I’ve lost nearly all my mortal friends and servants. Some have died and the others I’ve let go to be with their ailing families. It’s a nightmare up there, Hekate.”

  “If he gets really ill,” Hekate said, “bring him here. Please. Don’t let him die.”

  Aphrodite gave her a complicit nod. “That was my plan. I’ll plead for him with your parents.”

  “I’ll give you the fruit myself if I have to. I know which one it is.”

  Aphrodite smiled, a sparkle of teasing lightening her features. “Why, you are growing up, if he’s affected you so. Do come and see me when all this horror has passed. We’ll discuss men and what to do with them. If your parents don’t mind.”

  “I ate the pomegranate. I’ll start remembering things like that soon.”

  “Ah, but there’s an art to love, and not everyone learns it, even in a whole lifetime.” Aphrodite turned aside on the path. “I’d better return to him. Don’t worry.” She sent Hekate a kind smile. “We won’t let him die, will we?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  So the plague ended up okay,” Sophie said. “Sort of.”

  “To the degree plagues ever do.” Adrian opted not to add anything more pessimistic, though he certainly could have.

  It was Thursday morning, Thanksgiving, and they were soaring north in the bus toward Carnation. Heavy gray clouds socked in the entire Northwest, and frigid temperatures kept Sophie bundled in the wool blanket. The wind lashed at Adrian through his hat, scarf, coat, and gloves, though the cold wouldn’t harm him, of course. Nor would spending a few days and nights mostly away from her, camping out and doing his grim errands.

  But he did worry Thanatos might try to pounce on her. Thanksgiving, he gathered, was the kind of occasion when you could count on uni students returning home. Quentin would know where to look, and had already shown up at Sophie’s house. So snooping around the area looking for the old villain, fruitless though his search was likely to be, was partly how he planned to spend his weekend. Which sounded dismal.

  “Adonis didn’t die,” Sophie added.

  Adrian drew his mind back to the plague that had rendered their daughter immortal. “Yeah, he pulled through.” That wasn’t how Adonis had received his ticket to immortality. That came later.

  “But people started hating us. I mean, some already did, in places. But after the plague…” Sophie clutched the black blanket around herself, frowning at the cracked dashboard. “They blamed us. We were ‘the gods.’ We must have made it happen.”

  He nodded. She’d remember the next part any second now.

  “Thanatos,” she said, right on cue. “That was when they officially formed. Mortality for everyone.”

  “We didn’t take them seriously at first,” he said. “So they were bitter and angry, so what? Everyone was. We were doing all we could to help people. It wasn’t as if they could kill us.”

  “Except they could.”

  “Yeah. They didn’t find that out for a while, though. Nor did we.”

  “Guess I get to that later.” Sophie leaned her head back against the seat, eyes closed. Same pose she had taken, and same overwhelmed look she had worn, when he first carted her off to the Underworld. Two months ago now. They’d come so far in just two months.

  But undergone such damage too. He thought of Rhea. Of his father, seeing him less and less, puttering around the house, lonely without him. Of Zoe and Tabitha, their lives evolving into madness. Of Niko, whom he’d kicked out, and Freya too. Of Bill Wilkes and his fellow assassin, dead and probably mourned by someone somewhere. Of Sophie’s family, worried by the attacks on their daughter and the police’s questions. And above all of Sophie herself, trying to stand firm beneath the weight of past lives, Thanatos, a new supernatural boyfriend, and university coursework. She was crumbling. He could see it.

  She needed this break, and he’d do whatever he could to keep Quentin away from her during it. Not to mention for the rest of her life. Or forever…

  They landed near her family’s house, in the marshy forest of the spirit realm. On this cloud-dimmed day, it was dark as twilight under the tangled trees.

  He switched her into the living realm. The trees vanished, but the clouds and swampy g
round remained.

  “Try not to obsess about Thanatos,” he told her. “Not their origins and not what they’re up to these days, either. Just for a few days, forget them if you can. Enjoy your family. Think about nice things.”

  “I’ll try.” She kept the stoic mask on. Weariness and exams had put shadows under her eyes and given a paler cast to her skin.

  “Will you be seeing Tabitha?” he asked.

  “Probably. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got some parties lined up to jet off to.”

  “Well, if you do talk to her, be careful about discussing things where people can hear you.”

  Sophie nodded.

  They kissed goodbye. She turned toward the farmhouse. He watched her walk off, and wished with all his soul that, since he couldn’t give her a blue orange yet, he could at least give her happiness and peace. Just a few days’ worth, enough so she could rest.

  Perhaps there was a spell for that.

  Hmm.

  Once she was indoors, he hopped back into the spirit realm and texted Zoe. Can you do magic to give Sophie a nice weekend?

  It was still five in the morning in New Zealand, so Zoe would be asleep, and he wouldn’t get an answer for a while. He put away his phone.

  Kiri barreled over to him, splashing mud. He crouched to pick dead leaves off her fur, and began plotting where to look for Quentin first.

  A couple of hours later, as he wandered around the town of Carnation, failing to find anyone suspicious-looking, Zoe texted him back.

  You mean like altering her mood? Not cool, without her consent.

  Suppose not, he responded. How about protection then? Is that ok?

  She called him.

  “Hey,” she said. “Protection’s all right, but what do you need it for? What’s up?”

  It started raining. He took shelter under the faded wooden eaves outside a grocery store. “The usual. Thanatos. She’s visiting home for a few days, and they might try to attack. I don’t know, I’m being paranoid.”

  “A spell would be hard from over here. Where is she? At her parents’ house, you said?”