by James Welsh
As the Underworld began to collect itself under its new leader, Athena quickly realized her new duties as Queen of the Dead would be much harder than Queen of the Life. This was mostly because of the promise that she had made to each of the shades as well as herself. She had promised the shades that they would finally have life in their deaths, but even then, when she had uttered those words, she knew that was impossible. Even as a newfound Queen with so much power and even more potential, there were some things that she just couldn’t do. She had already learned enough from her uncle: he had promised those shades life above again, and those conquests only brought about more death. But sometimes it is hard to tell death apart from life.
To make matters worse, the souls were now agitated. Before, Hades had trapped all of the shades in a forever of dimness and grayness – the souls simply did not know anything better in the afterlife. But now, now that the souls had touched the outside world once more, they knew that things should have been better all along. They were clamoring and they made sure that Athena knew it – even from deep within the palace, Athena could hear the howling of the souls outside, their demands whistling in through the windows and the open doors.
But clever Athena was already thinking of ways to calm her new subjects, in spite of her limitations. She was driven to invention, all out of necessity – already, the shades and their demands were becoming toxic and viral – their desires were beginning to infect Athena until she too wanted to enter the outside world, to invade once more as her uncle had.
And so Athena began her long and drawn-out plan to reestablish order in the kingdom of the dead. First, she demanded the re-imprisoned Sisyphus to walk with her through the rocky fields of the Underworld, just before the River Styx. Sisyphus went along reluctantly – he was terrified of what punishment his new Queen had in store for him – he had spent too long with Hades to expect anything else. So, he was surprised when, while walking through the field, Athena pointed to a massive boulder to the side and said simply, “Move this here.”
Sisyphus, who had been forced to spend all of his lifetimes moving the same boulder up an impossible hill, was all too glad to move this rock just a few feet to the side. And that was what he did, and it only took a few moments, and then the boulder took up the entire passageway leading to the Styx. When he did this, the passage was blocked, and the shades trudging along suddenly had nowhere else to go. As they stumbled around and bumped into each other, Athena suddenly appeared with a flaming torch – it was bad enough that they were getting their first taste of death, but now they were stuck in a field where rocks loomed all around them, their shadows dancing in some light. But when Athena appeared, the shades all calmed. Perhaps it was because the torch looked so warm, or perhaps they immediately recognized Athena from all of the statues they had seen in the temples above, or from all of the paintings on their old vases.
Athena smiled her little smile. “Welcome. I’m glad to meet you, all of you. You do not need to worry about this passageway any more. That is the old life – I want to welcome you to your new life after death.”
She waved her torch towards another passageway cut into the rocks. This one had been hidden from view all of that time, but now it was cast in a light for all to see. The shades all dutifully began streaming into this crevice, like a dammed river grasping for new valleys to conquer. This passage looked much like the other one did, but this one had a completely new destination. While the old path led to the River Styx and its fiery waters, this one led to the River Lethe. The Lethe was a dark blue to the Styx’s pink, with the Lethe being much cooler, almost like actual water but with a very salty taste, even saltier than the ocean. And, whereas the fire-drenched plains of the Underworld lay beyond the Styx, here there was nothing but darkness on the far shore of the Lethe. It was such a pitch that no torch could light it.
As the shades gathered on the shore of the Lethe, they saw what the far shore looked like – or rather what it didn’t look like – and they were frightened because they could not see it. The shades began to cling together until there was a whirlwind on the shore. Athena, who had been leading the shades towards this particular spot on the shore, appeared and motioned for the shades to calm themselves, which they did.
“Now, I know many of you have heard the legends, of how a ferry will take you across the river to the other side, where your fate awaits you. That is true – for the other river. This river, though, is different. It is shallow enough for you to cross on your own. The other side may look terrifying from here, but it is more wonderful than you can imagine.”
As if to prove the point, Athena waded out into the water until it neared her waist, the warm, salty water itchy on her skin. She motioned for the shades still on shore to follow her out, and so they did. The normally still water became whipped like the tides in a storm as shades by the hundreds then thousands spread out over the river. They stayed above the waters for a short while, but about halfway across the mighty river, something began to happen. The water was so thick that even the shades – each of whom were little more than bursts of dirty air – began to become stuck in the water – they struggled to free themselves, but they only sank in deeper – it took only a few moments for each of the shades to disappear into the water, never to reappear.
Athena watched all of this from where she stood, still waist-deep in the water. She watched for a few moments before turning her back on the scene and wading back to shore. Even as a powerful goddess, she struggled to make her way through the water, but she managed it. When she reached dry land once more, she knelt down and brushed the salty muck from her flowing gowns before leaving. As she left, she noticed that the shades still on shore did not notice the mass drowning taking place, their eyesight too miserable, the river too wide, the Underworld too dim.
And yet, in spite of how tragic the scene appeared above the surface, Athena had actually been more merciful than Hades could have ever imagined. That was because there was something brilliant about the River Lethe. As each of the shades slipped beneath the surface, they actually didn’t drown in the river. Instead, each of the shades found themselves in a new, blank world. It was literally and metaphorically blank, with as many colors as the snow. And, just like the snow, when you buried into it, whiteness filled your eyes, white noise filled your ears, and your nose turned red and numb.
But in a world of nothing, there is no nothing – the mind is always hungry and will find its own food, no matter what. And that was what happened, after awhile of the souls being trapped in the white blackness – their eyes started to hallucinate, then their ears, then their tongues. And, out of the blankness, there came worlds that were not real yet still real enough. The shades had used their old memories to build up their worlds, the emotions their mortar. The river lived up to its obscure legend: its waters could make you forget your present, no matter how real and painful it was. And the shades became drunk with memories, and bit by bit, they let themselves be swallowed back into the womb of their past.
For the dead mothers amongst the shades, they relived their children and those childhoods, the giggles of laughter, the cries from cuts, and the first words. The men lived through their triumphs in war, the metals they hammered together, the fields they plowed, and the money they earned.
One man in particular, Anastasius, a farmer who had come home one night to find his wife robbed and slaughtered, he was rewarded perhaps most of all. As he tripped through the water, hoping to find his wife at the other shore, Anastasius was terrified as he slipped beneath the surface and into the whiteness. He knew his wife wasn’t there, and he wanted to scream out, he wanted to curse Athena, but as soon as he opened his wispy mouth, the river’s muck filled him. In a few moments, he was preserved like a fly in amber – and perhaps just as precious – and, almost immediately, the memories began to fill him like blood through the veins. But as all of the memories began to flash through him like lightning through a cup of water, there was
one memory that quickly took over and consumed him like a monster. It was the memory of the first time Anastasius saw his wife, or rather, the first time she saw him. It was at the festival, following one of the plays in the sprawling amphitheater, with the sky for its roof. As the crowds streamed out, chattering amongst themselves about one of the actors who tripped and fell as he was walking onto the stage, Anastasius was laughing with his friends. In the middle of one of his famous roaring laughs, the young farmer felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and saw a beautiful woman with long, blonde hair and eyes like the fields. He would later learn her name was Korinna – she was the daughter of a blacksmith. The blacksmith, a longtime widower, was also a mother to his only daughter. And so Korinna was more aggressive than the other women in the town, and Anastasius liked this – he was always tired of the shy girls turning away and giggling whenever he walked past them. And, perhaps it was because she was so beautiful, or perhaps it was because she came into his life the moment he was laughing, but Anastasius knew right then that he liked her – and a few moments later he knew that he loved her. And that memory alone played and played again in the depths of his everything, and Anastasius lived it like life, because he was back with his wife once again.
What none of those shades knew – or perhaps they did, but they didn’t want to admit it – was that none of those feelings were real, as brilliant and blinding as they were. Rather, each of those shades had been tricked into living in their own field of Elysium, the seaweed beneath them now the long grasses of a perfect meadow. So, while the memories may have not been real, their happiness was real, and to Athena, that was what truly matter.
The happiness was the new reality, because, even though the souls were all dipped deep in the water, their utter joy still shone through the surface, churning the waters and shooting beams of light upwards. And, for once, the entire rocky plains of the Underworld lit up, brighter than even the sunlight on the surface world above. And Athena tossed her torch to the side because it was now useless to her. She walked back with the torch sputtering out behind her, letting the newfound light guide her back to her new home in the palace.
The Underworld – not so much the one that Hades gave to Athena as much as the one Athena took from Hades – was now even stranger than it was before. All of the myths from before were realer than the storytellers thought they were – all of those tragedies about torture, of being starved without dying, of being stabbed without dying, of being mangled without dying, all of those horror stories were true. But now, now the Underworld was, in all ways at least, even better than the world above. With life, there came the sorrows, the disappointments, the flickers in the light. All of the sadness was gone now, though – the happiest moments in each of their lives consumed the souls, and the happy souls consumed the Underworld.
This light, as shining and just as it was, did not touch the Tartarus, the prison for the hated. No, those damned, whether it was Sisyphus or Tantalus, they were cast so far down into the earth that the light never touched them. No, they still grew paler and paler until they couldn’t any longer, grinding their bones into their work like chalk into stone. And, even further beneath Tartarus, there was the other prison, the one that no one ever spoke of. That one, it was calm most of the time, but still Athena heard the occasional loud roar and a crash against the bars. But, like her uncle, she too was too frightened to discover what terrible beast was trying to break out.
No, none of those cursed monsters deserved such a wonderful glow. Instead, the light that emanated from the River Lethe shone up and up, flooding through the vast web of tunnels and caverns, bubbling and murmuring up until it touched the mortal world even. The light broke through the volcanic entrance to the Underworld, filling the nighttime heavens with an electrical cloud. Some nights, those mortal farmers who lived in the area would go into the village, they would talk about the strange green lights they saw the night before, the lights that seemed to dance with the ceiling of the skies now their floor.
Those in town, many of whom had never bothered to look up at the night sky because they were too busy looking down at their drinks or looking down at other people, those villagers laughed off the poor farmers in the countryside. Some of the farmers felt insulted because they knew that the villagers were wrong – the other farmers felt justified because they knew they were right. And as for the travelers that made their way through that part of the country? Some nights when they traveled through with their caravans, they saw the volcano to the east, with its shimmering lights, and they thought that it was the sunrise. And, although they were wrong, an accidental sunrise is still a sunrise.
New York-Delaware
September 2011-February 2012