by Diana Tyler
Hermes smiled. “He’s wisely kept his distance from her. But if it weren’t for his past, I imagine he would give her at least one of those saccharine sonnets he’s written about her.”
Orpheus felt a twinge in his human heart. He couldn’t help but feel sympathy for a youth in love, even more so when the love was kept secret, shut up in the solitary crevices of Ethan’s own soul.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DOMA
Hermes landed Orpheus on a street corner amid a crowd too busy to notice a man appearing out of nowhere. Orpheus felt warmth rush into his skin as the last trace of invisibility lifted away. Nearly everyone, he noticed, held a brown paper coffee cup. He followed his nose and walked into the Astrolux café just one block away, where he spotted Chloe waiting at the end of the line.
“Good afternoon,” he said softly, so as not to startle her.
But her shoulders jumped to her ears anyway. She darted out of line and hurried toward the door.
“Where are you going?” he said as he followed her, smiling at the group of teens filing through the door, blocking her way out. “Chloe, I need to talk to you. Please, just give me five minutes.”
With a sigh, she let the door close, but not before glancing up and down the street. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Please, Chloe. I know you have questions about what happened last night. I want to tell you.” He moved closer and whispered, “I want to help you.”
Chloe turned and gave him a look of disgust. “Help me? You mean lead me into a secluded cave and introduce me to a psychopath? You mean watch me intoxicate myself, and then lull me to sleep with your stupid music?”
“I only wanted to put her to sleep,” said Orpheus. “Not you.”
Seeing that his words did little to appease her, Orpheus pulled off his backpack and set it on the empty table beside him. He unzipped it and slid out the lyre, just enough so she could see its crossbar.
“I found this in that cave during a hike a few months ago,” he said. “I’ve always had a flare for music, but this…this is supernatural, Chloe. I play it, and wild animals creep out of their holes and sit at my feet. My own family walks about in a halcyon daze. And if I play something particularly pacifying, even the most highly strung become comatose, as you saw for yourself with Circe.”
Chloe folded her arms, looking at him as though he were speaking gibberish. “So I owe a thank-you to a harp?” She laughed and pushed the door open.
Orpheus snatched his backpack from the table and followed her onto the sidewalk. “It’s a lyre, actually. One of the most well-known instruments of the ancient world.”
Chloe sat down at the outside table farthest from the door and eyed Orpheus with a skeptical smile. “You know, I’m wondering if I wasn’t drugged last night and hallucinated everything.”
She looked down at her nails and began to pick at them. “Your father is a keeper, correct?” Orpheus nodded. “He’s definitely a man of many secrets. And he’s obviously taught you a lot about Petros’s past. Why should I doubt that he’s also taught his son a few handy life skills, like how to deceive and debilitate his fellow man?”
Orpheus took the lyre out of his backpack and sat down in the corner. “The only way to debilitate my fellow man is with this,” he said, holding the lyre by the arms that had been made from the horns of an oryx. He pulled his plectrum from his pocket and began to strum.
The melody was soft at first, blending into the buzz of conversation and the whir of traffic. Still, after just a few seconds, Chloe was leaning forward on her elbows, her eyes staring intensely at the six strings as they vibrated with irresistible euphony. How would he prove to her that the lyre’s power was authentic if she was transfixed by his playing?
Orpheus set the plectrum down and watched as Chloe’s brows furrowed, the last note fading into the noise around them.
“Are you going to play, or what?” Chloe said.
Orpheus had to laugh. “I just did.” He pointed to the crosswalk at the end of the block. “Go down there and watch.”
“Your magic instrument only works within a certain radius?”
“Are you always so snide?” he asked, finding himself, once again, more amused by her backtalk than riled by it.
Chloe grumbled something unintelligible and scooted back her chair. “Make it quick.” Then she stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and strode down the sidewalk.
Orpheus rolled his eyes. When he saw that Chloe was a safe distance away, he began to play once more.
Two canines were the first to be lured. The smaller one, long-bodied and short-legged, wriggled out of a woman’s sizeable tote bag at an adjacent table and jumped into the chair where Chloe had been sitting. The second dog, much larger and resembling the shepherds’ dogs Orpheus knew as a boy, refused to continue walking beside its master. It sat on its haunches in front of Orpheus as its petite owner whistled and tugged at its leash; even a treat from her purse couldn’t coerce the animal to move. It just sat there, looking at Orpheus as its fluffy tail fanned back and forth.
The children were next. Breaking free from the hands of their parents, they joined Orpheus at his table, dragging unused chairs from other tables to be as near to the music as possible.
Orpheus laughed to himself, remembering how his friends once joked with him that he’d be the happiest of papas one day, so long as he held onto the lyre that could turn rowdy children into stoics. He counted himself fortunate that he and Eurydice hadn’t yet had children when she’d died. He couldn’t imagine raising them without their mother. But then, with children, he would have had a piece of her always, little reminders, perhaps, of what made her laugh, how she carried herself when she was blissfully happy, or how green her eyes were in the spring.
Orpheus jumped in his seat when a young towheaded girl pushed her tiny freckled face to the glass window behind him and tapped her mother’s shoulder. A few seconds later, she, her siblings and every other café customer were crowding the sidewalk, completely mesmerized by the buoyant lilt flowing from the strings. Not a single person spoke; they all smiled contentedly as though they had just woken up from the sweetest of dreams.
The poet eyed Chloe leaning against a traffic signal, her arms folded in that defiant, unimpressed way of hers. He decided to change his tune.
Little by little, Orpheus slowed the upbeat cadence, letting the melody gradually fade from a jubilant benediction to a sober ballad, one he’d written about the Pleiades when studying the constellation on a winter night.
The children began to yawn. The shepherd dog beside Orpheus lay down and rested its head on its paws. The smaller one was already fast asleep, curled up in a furry chestnut ball, its pink tongue sticking out. After a minute, everyone, adults included, was sitting on the concrete at Orpheus’s feet, nodding off as steam continued to rise from their forgotten cups of coffee and cocoa.
The only active body was Chloe’s, as she walked back towards Orpheus, a patronizing smirk on her face as she applauded him. “You’ve proved your point,” she said. “Now let the poor pedestrians go and explain to me how you’re doing that.”
As Orpheus rose from his chair to obey, he took a quick survey of the audience that had congregated. He was pleased to see that Ethan was not among them. What had Hermes done with him? Pushing the question from his mind, he gave a gracious bow and thanked his captive listeners for their attention, though he knew they were still too stupefied to hear him. Slowly, however, the trance wore off, and the dogs began to sniff and circle each other as the humans helped each other to their feet.
Orpheus put the lyre back into his bag and went speeding down the sidewalk to join Chloe before people had time to scratch their heads and wonder what had occurred.
“Now talk,” Chloe said as they turned the corner. “How do you do that?”
“It’s a gift,” replied Orpheus. He lowered his head and whispered, “A doma, to use the ancient word.”
Chloe gave him a wary sidelong glance. “And where, pr
ay tell, did you receive this doma?”
She stopped in front of a shop with a small chalkboard outside the door that read: FLAVOR OF THE DAY: POMEGRANATE PUNCH. She pointed to it and turned to stare at Orpheus. “If what happened on that island was real, do you realize how traumatized I’m going to be for the rest of my life? I couldn’t eat the ice cream of the day without imagining Circe coming at me with a bronze pitcher.” She opened the door and motioned for Orpheus to go in.
“What are we doing?” he asked as he gazed at a giant display case filled with small troughs of colorful globs. People eat this?
“I’m hungry.” Chloe’s eyes danced across the bizarre offering of pabulum set before them. Then she looked down at the phone she now held in her hand and frowned. “I’d better go back to Astrolux. I was waiting for someone before you showed up.” She shook her head as she sighed and tilted her chin to the ceiling. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Is the person you were there to meet tall and a bit gangling?”
Chloe nodded.
“And does he have short dark hair? Pale?”
“Yes…”
“He showed up,” Orpheus lied. “But when he saw the audience I amassed at your behest, he left before the lyre could affect him.”
Ignoring him, Chloe marched up to the counter and gave her order to the cashier. “What do you want?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I’m not hungry, thank you.”
“And one chocolate brownie,” she said to the cashier.
Orpheus watched as the man took a silver scoop and filled a pink paper cup to the brim with a brown heap of what the esteemed poet could only compare to cow manure. The cashier stuck a tiny wooden spoon in it, handed it to Chloe, and then proceeded to stuff another cup, this time with a creamy-white variation of the unappetizing sludge in the first cup. Oh, what he wouldn’t do for a plate of sausage or a bowl of Eurydice’s lentils. He began to salivate.
He sat down at the furthest two-person table and Chloe joined him. Without a word, she dug her spoon into her cup and pulled out a mound of white goop, the whole thing covered with pastel specks and dripping with a dark, honey-like substance. After a while, when the cup was half empty, she lifted her head. She stopped eating when she saw the Orpheus staring at her, a look of repulsion still etched onto his face.
“Here, have some,” she said, pushing the untouched cup of brown mush towards him. “I got it for you in case you changed your mind.”
“Or in case you’re not satisfied after you’ve finished masticating your present portion of florid excrement,” he said flatly.
“My what? Have you ever even had ice cream?” His silence answered for him. “You are the strangest person I’ve ever met.”
“And you are the rudest person I’ve ever met,” he countered.
Unfazed, Chloe licked her spoon before dunking it back into the cup.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reminding himself that it would be infinitely more difficult to win her trust if they were enemies. “Let’s start over, shall we?”
“Fine by me. You said this would take five minutes, and so far it’s been almost twenty. And all I’ve learned is that you and that Circe woman are wackos, and that you’re a fool for thinking I won’t report this to the Fantásmata.” She let her spoon rest against the rim of the cup, anticipating his reaction to her words.
“You swore you wouldn’t.” His voice broke and he lowered his eyes with flawless dramatic effect.
“Name one good reason not to.” She was clearly unmoved by his show of self-pity.
“Because you and I are the same,” he whispered.
This got her attention. She sat back in her chair, her eyes locked with his.
He didn’t move a muscle as his thoughts refocused on Eurydice and what he must do to join her.
Chloe’s body relaxed as she pulled her chair forward and cleared her throat. “What…what exactly do you mean by ‘you and I are the same’?”
“I mean I’m not the only one with a doma.”
Chloe laughed and pulled at the cuffs of her long-sleeve shirt. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. There’s nothing special about me, unless you count the fact that I’m one of the only orphans in Petros.”
“You are special, Chloe. You just haven’t been given your gift yet. But when you have it, everything will change.”
Chloe nodded toward Orpheus’s backpack on the floor next to his chair. “I’m sorry if this offends you, but I have a hard time seeing how anything could change if all I have is a lyre that knocks people out.”
She doesn’t know what she’s saying. She doesn’t know you. Orpheus felt anger and, yes, offense swell inside him. His lyre was his entire life—had been his entire life. And it had changed everything by bringing him his one and only love.
“You don’t have to worry about receiving a lousy lyre as your gift,” Orpheus said finally. “Every doma is different, or so I’ve been told.”
“Told by whom? And where did you get your doma? And what if I don’t want one?”
Orpheus closed his eyes, replaying her questions in his mind. Why did she have to be so inquisitive? “Told by Iris,” he said at last. “As for your other questions, I’m afraid I don’t have the answers. I was hoping our little adventure in Psychro Cave would have provided more insight, but we both know it was a disappointment.”
“That’s a bit of an understatement, don’t you think?”
Orpheus laughed. She was inquisitive and had a dry wit, two qualities that weren’t making his mission any easier. He wished he could loathe her.
“The thing is,” Orpheus said as he recalled the lines Hermes had told him to memorize, “I only know that your gift and mine can answer those and thousands of other questions that the powers that be don’t want answered. We just have to work together.”
Chloe looked out the window, squinting in the low, late-afternoon sun. She considered his words. “How do you know I’ll receive a doma any time soon?”
Orpheus pointed at the clouds. “Have you looked up into the night sky lately? The Moonbow appeared three nights ago. And you also just turned eighteen, like me. That’s when Iris says it happens. Approximately, anyway.”
“The Moonbow?” Chloe picked up her cup and slid her spoon into a smooth corner of the ice cream.
Orpheus shrugged. “I’m just the messenger.” He’d heard that line from Hermes at least a thousand times. “But now that the Moonbow has returned, Iris says she will meet us and answer all our questions.”
Chloe finished her ice cream, then sat in silence as more customers began filtering into the shop.
Orpheus’s knees bounced nervously. He pressed them down and started to hum the calming ballad he’d played out on the street. He had until sunset to take her to Lake Thyra, the portal to Hades, and time was slipping away. The more minutes that passed, the greater his chances that something would go wrong and he would be back in the Vale of Mourning, or worse, suffering in some forsaken corner of Tartarus, the uttermost sphere of hell.
“Okay,” Chloe said. “I accept the message, and I’ll give you another chance. But if this Iris you’re talking about is anything like the seed lady, I’m out.”
“Deal,” said Orpheus, using every ounce of self-restraint he had to keep from smiling like a buffoon.
“And one more condition.”
Orpheus slouched in his chair and ground his teeth. Maybe he could loathe her after all.
Chloe moved his cup of muddy-brown ice cream in front of him. “You have to try this.” She scooped out a spoonful and handed it to him.
Suppressing his gag reflex, Orpheus raised the spoon to his mouth and forced it between his lips. Instantly, he sat straight in his chair, his tastebuds flooding with the sensation of rich, velvety sweetness. “It isn’t excrement,” he said in surprise as he took another bite.
“It’s chocolate,” Chloe said, pressing a finger to her lip to stifle a laugh.
For the first time since he�
��d been alive again, Orpheus felt at ease. Freedom and happiness were so close, he could taste them, just as well as he could the delectable chocolate ice cream.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
JASPER
After waiting twenty minutes for Chloe to show up at the café, Ethan finally gave up and made his way back to his truck. He wasn’t sure if he felt relieved or disappointed that she hadn’t come. On the one hand, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was risk putting himself and his family in danger by revealing his long-held secret to Chloe. But on the other, he’d sensed a surge of adrenaline flowing hot in his veins as he’d considered what might happen, what might change, if Chloe knew her father’s last words to him.
He’d begun to look forward to throwing caution to the wind, to telling her the truth, come what may. It was reckless, to be sure, but it was a thought that thrilled him. But she hadn’t shown up, and he felt stupid for thinking that confiding in her could possibly be a good idea.
And there was a second reason for his disappointment, one he couldn’t ignore. For thirteen years, since he’d first sat next to Chloe in grade one, Ethan had harbored feelings for his distant classmate, the girl who always kept to herself, speaking only to him when the subject pertained to their studies.
As a young boy, it had been her long white-blonde hair that had first caught his attention. He’d often play with its ends when they stood in line in the hallway or when she leaned over her desk while writing. But as she got a little older and her hair became darker, he began to be interested in much more than her outward appearance.
He admired the intensity with which she listened to their teachers, and the way she chewed on her pen cap when she was momentarily stymied during an exam. He had to stop himself from staring at the soft curve of her neck, and the rose blush on her cheekbones as she read during study hall.
It wasn’t that she was beautiful—it was that she was lovely. It was that she stood out like a radiant white lily among an amber field of barley. It was that, despite her quiet confidence and her preferred detachment from social groups and pastimes, there was a sad loneliness that he could see clear as day when she thought nobody was watching.