But I knew what he was thinking anyway. “Yes, I do think that,” I told him grimly. I met Artemis’s hazel eyes again to be sure she agreed, and she obviously did.
“Well, let’s give it a go,” she huffed unhappily.
Wordlessly, Alec, Artemis, and I walked up to the rock and placed our hands on its rough surface as I counted off, “One, two, and three!”
We all pushed on it as hard as we possibly could. The large rock rolled over in what seemed like slow motion, and we were instantly blasted with a rush of cold air. Left in place of the small boulder was a gaping hole, just wide enough for a person to fit through, and right at the edge were a few more drops of golden blood. The hole was so deep that we couldn’t even see the bottom—only steps made of hard earth that descended as far as we could see into the darkness. I took a quick glance back at the overturned rock, and sure enough, on the side of the small boulder that had been buried in the dirt was a Greek symbol, marking it as yet another entrance to the infamous Underworld.
My breath caught in my throat; this was the closest any of the gods besides Hermes would ever be able to come to the Underworld, and probably to Hades. I wasn’t quite sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing, but like anything else, I supposed it depended on the situation.
“I’m going in,” Alec proclaimed suddenly, straightening up to his full height and checking to make sure his bronze armor was secure.
Artemis and I looked at him in shock. “No,” I refused immediately, shaking my head. I wasn’t going to let him go down there alone, where Hades could easily kill him without any of us knowing. Not one of us besides Hermes even knew what was down there, and losing the Knowing boy would have been awful for more than one reason.
Alec’s eyes met mine, and he continued calmly, “Athena, I need to do this. I’ll be fine.”
I shook my head again, not giving up. “No, you don’t. Hermes is already down there. Wait for the report so we know what the deal is.” Alec only narrowed his eyes at me, mulling over what I said. “Please, Alec,” I pleaded with him. “We can’t save the world if you’re dead.”
Alec continued to hold my gaze, but our staring contest was interrupted by Poseidon’s voice coming from each of our walkie-talkies. “This is patrol four. Hermes has returned from Hades. Here’s the report.”
The walkie-talkies went silent for a moment before Hermes’s voice came on the line and informed us of what he had seen. “You probably guessed it, but Hades wasn’t talking. I barely even made it past Cerberus today,” he said, referring to Hades’s giant three-headed guard dog. “But I am pretty sure he has Persephone down there, even though I didn’t see her. There were extra guards patrolling the hallways.”
“Thanks for the info, Hermes. Any updates from the rest of the patrols?” we heard Zeus ask.
Taking my cue, I pressed the talk button on my walkie-talkie. “Yes, A Team found a trail of blood leading to a new entrance to the Underworld,” I informed everyone listening.
“Lord Zeus, I volunteer to go down and talk to Hades,” Alec added into his own device, referring to Zeus formally—a sign that the dark-haired boy was dead serious. I frowned, noticing Artemis do the same, but deep down I knew there would be no stopping Alec on a mission. He had already made it this far, after all. And he had learned from me.
There was a long pause before Zeus finally responded, “What makes you think you’ll be able to get him to talk, when Hermes couldn’t?”
Alec must have been thinking about what to say before Zeus even asked, because he answered firmly, “I’m not a god.”
I didn’t need to hear Zeus’s reply; sometimes four little words were enough to win an argument. They could mean so much, could change an entire equation in the blink of an eye.
And Alec was smart; if he played the right angle, I knew he would be able to get Hades to talk. However, I also knew that his plan was really risky. Alec wouldn’t have any of us to help protect him, since there was no way that Hades would let Hermes back down there again, so it would be a miracle if Alec made it out of the Underworld completely unharmed. Not to mention that if he took even one tiny step down the earthy stairs, there was no going back; he would have to go all the way down and finish what he started, whether he liked it or not. He would have to be brave. He would have to be strong. But most importantly, he would have to survive.
And if he survived, he would have to be a hero. There was no question about it.
“All right,” Zeus answered slowly, still pondering the idea. “Let’s meet and figure out the details.”
“Everybody, wait,” I said into the walkie-talkie, a light bulb flashing on in my brain. “I have an idea.”
“Of course you do,” I just barely heard Ares’s voice mutter ungratefully, and I simply ignored him, ready to tell the rest of the gods my ingenious plan.
___________________
Two hours later, the rest of the gods and I were back in the forest, all standing around the entrance to the Underworld that we had found earlier in the morning. While the other gods nervously murmured among themselves, Alec closed his eyes and started taking deep breaths to calm himself down. I kept one eye on him as I checked to make sure his armor was on tight, and then I adjusted the tiny camera and microphone (which was about the size of a button) that I had placed on his bronze chest plate a few minutes earlier. Next, I turned to face my shiny black laptop, which sat atop a fallen log beside us, and checked the wirelessly transmitted camera feed to make sure the image was clear–it was.
Alec started fidgeting with the minuscule camera, but I only sighed, reminded of the long spy phase I had gone through when I was younger. I used to use those little electronic toys to keep an eye on my drunken father, just in case he ever tried to abuse my mother again. And he did, on more than one occasion. I had enough evidence to have him sent to prison for at least a few months, but, of course, no one else knew about it. I didn’t feel inclined to betray him anyway, since he hadn’t touched my mom so brashly in a long while now.
“Everything looks good,” I informed everyone a minute later, pushing my father to the back of my mind, and the rest of the gods only stayed silent. Alec gave a short nod, but he was busy having a staring contest with the dark entrance to Hades’s realm. I wondered who was winning.
“Are you ready?” Zeus asked Alec, slowly running his fingers through his dirty-blond hair. “Are you sure you still want to do this?”
Alec nodded again, his dark hair shaking with his head, and started to say, “If I don’t come out—”
I slapped him hard across the face before he could even finish his sentence. When Alec’s bright eyes widened and his handsome jaw dropped in shock and confusion, I smirked and placed my hands on his shoulders, looking him right in the eye. “You’re coming back out,” I told him seriously, knowing that if he started to doubt himself then, he definitely wouldn’t come back.
And with that, I shoved Alec into the deep hole and down the first few steps made of reddish-brown earth. The steel-gray rock magically rolled over by itself, tightly sealing the secret entrance to the Underworld before Alec even had the chance to look back. I let out a sigh of relief, and then the rest of the gods and I turned to face the screen of my sleek laptop.
The camera view shifted slightly as Alec took a deep breath and another hesitant step down the stairs to Hades. “It’s kind of cold in here,” Alec whispered lightly as he continued his walk, but then he grew quiet. In fact, it was pitch black until Alec flicked on his flashlight, lighting up the narrow stairwell that appeared to descend forever.
___________________
Alec had been making his way down the seemingly endless stairs for about fifteen minutes when the tiny microphone started to pick up noises coming from farther along in the black tunnel. At first, it sounded like a dog barking, and even though I hadn’t been into the Underworld, I knew it was Cerberus. However, there was also another noise that sounded almost like singing, although I couldn’t tell for sure. Maybe I
was just imagining things.
Alec rounded a bend in the tunnel, and he continued to walk down more stairs for another two minutes or so, until the rest of the gods and I could see a bit of light on the laptop screen emanating from farther down in the Underworld. Suddenly, the dark tunnel opened up into a gigantic cavern, where the stairs continued to descend along the cold rock wall until they reached the bottom of the Underworld, which appeared to be entirely blanketed in a thick mist, except over the infamous River Styx. The only light in the whole cavern came from a small, candlelit lantern hanging from the bow of a small black gondola, which was waiting patiently on the wide river.
The cavern was divided into two parts by the River Styx, a huge, bluish-black channel of calm water. I could see that it was littered with the ghostly souls of people who had either died trying to enter the next realm or had been trapped in the water forever after trying to swim across instead of paying the fare to take the gondola driven by Charon, a servant to the lord of the Underworld himself. As long as Alec could avoid falling into the treacherous waters, he would make it to Hades’s palace perfectly fine.
As Alec carefully stepped off the earthen stairs, I realized that it wasn’t mist that covered the entire riverbank; in fact, it was a huge mass of the ghosts of dead people—the ones who hadn’t been buried with money under their tongues in the ancient Greek tradition and therefore weren’t able to pay Charon’s fare to get across the River Styx into the true Underworld.
Slowly, Alec pushed his way through the thousands of eerily quiet misty white ghosts that almost looked transparent, and he stopped right at the dark rocky edge of the River Styx, where the black gondola sat waiting for him. On the boat, a tall hooded figure we could only assume to be Charon stood hunched over and leaning on the long pole he used to steer the boat. He was facing Alec, but still we could not see his face—just a black shadow. Charon simply, silently held out a frail, ugly gray hand to Alec, waiting to be paid.
The camera on Alec’s armor shook for a minute while he pulled two golden drachmas, the currency of the ancient Greeks (I supposed the Knowing societies still used them), from his pockets. When he placed them in Charon’s bony hand, Charon slowly lifted them up closer to his face, as if studying them to see whether or not they were real. It had probably been decades, even centuries, since a live person who knew about the Greek myths (besides Hermes, of course) had tried to come down to the Underworld.
Eventually, Charon placed the money in a pocket in his long black robes and turned around to face the other side of the quiet river, standing still while he waited for Alec to climb onto the boat and sit down. Once Alec had situated himself relatively comfortably, the two of them slowly made their way across the calm waters, ignoring the ghosts in the river as they unsuccessfully tried to grab at the boat with their transparent hands.
When the two of them reached the other side, Alec eagerly clambered out of the boat and onto the rocky shore, where even more ghosts—ones who had actually been able to pay Charon’s fare—stood in a long line, waiting to be evaluated and sent into the three different parts of the Underworld. At the front of the line stood Cerberus, who was almost as tall as the cavern itself, looking down with wild eyes and barking angrily at all the ghosts that passed under his thick, meaty legs. Simply ignoring the long line of waiting souls, Alec took a shaky breath and started making his way to the front.
“Just like I told you,” Hermes muttered at the laptop screen next to me, although he knew Alec wouldn’t be able to hear him. Even though the microphone worked only one way, I wished we had tried putting a camera on Hermes before then. Then I shrugged and turned my attention back to Alec and the giant three-headed dog, desperately hoping everything would go as planned.
Alec stepped in front of the first ghost in line and stopped in his tracks, waiting to be evaluated. Realizing that he wasn’t actually dead, the monstrous black dog glared menacingly at Alec, and all three of Cerberus’s heads started growling, but Alec just stayed as still and calm as possible while they leaned in closer and closer to him. I was almost surprised Alec didn’t pass out from the horrible stench of dog breath that fogged up the camera lens.
“Hey there,” Alec began in Greek, his voice shaking slightly. “Easy, little Cerberus. That’s a good dog,” he murmured as he slowly reached out his hand to pat the giant guard dog, but Cerberus started growling again. Immediately, Alec placed his hand back at his side and continued, “It’s okay, boy. I’m just going to see Lord Hades, all right? Trust me; we’re friends.” Cerberus stopped growling and perked up as soon as he heard his master’s name. “That’s right, going to see Lord Hades now,” Alec told the dog and carefully took a tiny step forward. When Cerberus didn’t do anything, Alec took another couple of hesitant steps forward.
Cerberus continued to growl off and on until Alec had slowly made his way all around the huge animal. In one last swift, graceful movement, Alec reached behind him and pulled out a huge bone, which he had hidden under his chest plate earlier, and quickly threw it over Cerberus’s heads. Eagerly, Cerberus barked and spun around to retrieve the bone, and Alec took off in the other direction before the guard dog could turn back, heading toward the menacing castle in the distance.
As fast as he could, Alec raced across the Fields of Asphodel, rolling hills of an unnatural, grayish-colored grass, toward the looming palace, past the confused-looking ghosts of hundreds of both animals and people. Although I knew it was impossible, every footstep closer to the black palace made it seem as if the palace and its Corinthian columns were growing larger and larger. It was probably just some trick of the light, but then again, I had learned many years earlier that anything was possible in our world.
“I’m coming, Persephone,” Alec whispered as he stopped in front of the palace at scary-looking iron gates that must have been at least twenty feet tall. It was hard to tell from the camera’s viewpoint, but it looked to me like the points were topped with human skulls. For a moment, Alec paused at the closed gates, wondering what to do next, but then, as if by magic, the iron gates instantly swung open toward him, almost hitting him smack in the face.
Alec took another few deep breaths, then made his way up to the tall double doors of the palace, which were also made of iron and swung open automatically as Alec walked up the concrete steps. I heard Alec gasp as he took a few steps into the palace to see a totally different interior than one might have expected. Although the entire exterior was black with decorative skulls and terrifying statues of monsters, the entrance hall he had just walked into housed ceilings almost as tall as Cerberus, and beautiful paintings decorated the cream-and-white-striped walls all around him. Not sure where to go, Alec just stepped onto a long red carpet and followed it around two corners, until he suddenly found himself face-to-face with the lord of the dead.
“Who the hell are you?” the powerful god spat angrily in Greek as he studied Alec with his frightening black eyes, clearly upset that some stranger had interrupted his pleasant evening. Nervously shifting in place, Alec took a daring glance up at the very pale-skinned Hades, who was dressed all in black and sat upon a tall, looming throne made of crystal skulls at the far end of the rectangular room. Hades was also clutching the staff in his right hand like his life depended on it.
Alec quickly gulped and sank down on one knee to bow in respect to the handsome god. He took another deep breath and began, “I’m—”
“Alec?!” Persephone’s surprised and panicked voice cut through the air like a knife, a cry that I knew would only endanger Alec further. Nevertheless, he immediately looked up to see the beautiful daughter of Demeter being dragged into the large throne room by two of Hades’s ugly monster servants. Her light brown hair was messy and her short, white summer dress was ripped to shreds, revealing parts of her undergarments, but she looked okay to me otherwise. The frightened and confused Persephone had reddish rope burns on her arms and legs, and although someone had bandaged them with gauze, he or she had obviously done a poor
job of it.
“You two know each other?” Hades asked gruffly, pure hatred in his eyes, and Alec looked back up to the angry god, nodding silently. Hades’s gaze locked with Alec’s, and without taking his eyes off the Knowing boy, Hades ordered to his servants, “Take her away.”
Alec instantly opened his mouth to object, but thought better of it and stayed silent. In the background, Persephone disappeared again, though I could hear her fighting every step. Then a heavy door slammed closed, leaving the two teenage boys completely alone. “Now, tell me why you are here, little hero,” Hades sneered at Alec, who was still kneeling on the ground.
“I came here to check on Persephone, my lord. The rest of the gods and I were worried about her,” Alec said truthfully, gripping the handle of his sword tightly, just in case he needed it.
Hades raised his dark eyebrows and clicked his tongue in thought. “Ah, you know the Olympian Council,” he mused, lazily twirling his black staff around. I was pretty sure Alec nodded again from the way the camera was shifting around. Hades continued, “Well, as you can see, I’m attending to Lady Persephone, so you can just go home and—”
I frowned as Alec stood up and interrupted the god of the dead angrily. “Pardon me, Lord Hades, but it seems to me that Lady Persephone still has more than four weeks left of freedom from you.”
Hades narrowed his eyes, clearly very unhappy with the feisty Alec. With a ferocious glare in his eyes and a tight grip on his deadly staff, Hades only continued what he was saying before Alec had interrupted him, “As I was saying, you can just go home and tell your stupid Council that Persephone is staying here with me and that I will be granted the freedom to do whatever I want up in your realm, unless they want an all-out war for the ages. I really don’t care for the way your beloved Council parades about the forest and kills even the monsters that try to steer clear of them. And you expect me to believe that the other gods have Persephone’s best interest in mind, when they had never even met her in god form before the start of summer? They are clearly too ignorant to reign very well.”
The Forest Gods' Reign Page 14