I knuckle tears away and squint, Demeter already blithely gliding through the crumbling timber like it’s not even there. I wade in after her. Mana hits, rich and old, not cut with modern-day apathy. Pure. I bite down on the tip of my tongue, hoping to offset the dose, which snarls like a straight shot of LSD to the brain.
“Rupert.” A new voice; male, this time, deep baritone rolling across my ears. “What took you so long?”
I blink, and blink again. My vision acclimatises, mana-warped imagery coalescing into familiar shapes. Blink. If I expected to be impressed, I’m disappointed: the domicile of the Greek gods, or at least whatever waystation this represents, is dingy and slightly moist, with low ceilings and questionable lighting. The walls, peculiarly, are draped with paintings in bronze baroque frames, poorly maintained.
“I”—probably not the best idea to roll Orpheus under the bus—“decided to take the scenic route, I suppose. Get to know London, and all that. Enjoy the sights. Things.”
“I see,” the man resumes, disapproval weighing down the words. He’s taller than I am, barrel-chested, with a beard to embarrass entire lineages of Chinese men. “Could you perhaps have done it on someone else’s time? We are on a schedule—”
“I’m sorry. I just got off a thirty-six-hour flight. I barely even know which way is up. Could we just do this tomorrow? Also, I didn’t catch your name—”
He reaches me quickly, too quickly, spatial physics obliterated in a wink of his will. Before I can react, he clasps my hand and forearm, shakes the limb with unnerving gusto. “I am Poseidon,” he booms. “God of the sea. And—”
A tickle of power, frothing up like sea foam. Bob screams an objection inside my skull, pressing up, up, even as the wards heat.
“Proprietor of the worst fish and chip shop in Croydon,” drawls yet another voice, older, gnarled with cynicism. “Hephaestus. So glad that you could join us. I hope you weren’t anticipating any sort of fanciness, because there’s none—”
“Watch. Your. Tongue.” Poseidon releases me to spin about and glare at his brother-god. “Who do you think you are?”
“The only god with any relevance in this forsaken country we’ve been piled into. This cold, wet, terrible place.” Hephaestus hobbles forward. He’s the ugliest god I’ve seen, face warped by the fire; skin red-veined, smoke wisping out between the cracks.
“Enough.”
Darkness, still and heavy. Like the drape of a pall, like the caress of a mourning veil. It is not an onslaught, not the thundercrack of a broken skull, not a blade between the ribs, not the heart tortured into a final rictus. But quieter, more insidious, the last hours before dying, that muffled grief that comes as you memorize the planes of your beloved’s arm, hoping, hoping you’d be able to hold that moment, keep it safe, keep it whole, even though you know she asked for this, and this is not a death but a release, but you need her to stay anyway, need this piece of her, this scrap of time to tell you that you had something beautiful once and—
Minah. I drown her name, halfway nauseous from memory, and look up as Hades make his appearance. He is tall, gaunt, unmistakable, saturnine and regal, black hair framing cadaverously lean features. Unlike the others, he is pallid, albeit less like a Caucasian than a corpse, waxy and cold. All in all, a fearsome sight, were he not wearing crocs, shorts and a floral batik shirt.
“Must we always fight?” Hades’ accent is, bafflingly, crisp and disdainfully British, the kind prevalent in bad adaptations of Jane Austen’s works.
“There’s no fighting, brother. It’s not my fault that Poseidon cannot stomach the truth of his predicament.”
“I’ll have you know that shop is—”
Hephaestus rasps a wet, choking laugh and I wince. He sounds like he’s gargling razors. “So he says. So he says.” Another tortured paroxysm. “How do your subjects feel about your use of them, I wonder?”
Another horrifying laugh. This time, he almost hits the floor, and I drop my duffle, to go to his aid, only to be waved off by the irate deity. The other gods watch in silence as Hephaestus heaves himself upright, glassy-eyed, lip flecked with rust-streaked spit. He glowers at us, dragging an arm across his mouth, before retreating into one of the rooms.
“Petty,” Hades spits the word like something profane. Then, he says: “Welcome, Rupert. I hope that my brothers have not been cruel.”
“Your sister”—I glance across the hall; Demeter is suspiciously absent—“was pretty hospitable. Can’t say the same for Ananke.”
“Tonight, you rest.” Hades continues as though he had not heard me at all, arms held out in an expression of patrician grace, absurdly clashing with the crocs. “Tomorrow, you shall join our brethren in transforming this wretched borough into a place of plenty. We are honored by your presence. We shall see you tomorrow.”
“R-right.”
Calling it now: I’m dead.
(Well, not literally. But you’ll see, ang moh.)
CHAPTER EIGHT
MORNING ARRIVES SLATE-GRAY and appallingly cold. I’m awake long before the sun clambers above the cityline, a sickly radiance behind the smog, largely useless except as an indication that the day has begun.
Sleeping, to put it delicately, has been difficult. Jet lag alone might not have been insurmountable, but it came escorted by the deep autumn chill. Of course, that wouldn’t have been a problem either if this thrice-damned flat had any concept of heating—or, hell, if the Greek pantheon understood that a blanket needs to be more substantial than a square of tissue.
Groaning, I force myself upright, lose balance, and collapse back onto the creaking, wire-thin mattress. The impact startles a few moths from hiding. Lovely. I stare at the ceiling. My arms and legs, strangulated by seventeen layers of fabric, tingle alarmingly, as though warning of impending necrosis. I clench a fist and watch as the blood drains from my fingertips before draining sluggishly back into place.
I should probably fix this.
I swing my feet onto the ground, touch bare toes to the wooden flooring and immediately jump back. Maybe later. Maybe never, in fact. A wild idea rouses itself. Would it be possible to engage in tele-cooking? If someone rigged up a camera in whatever kitchen I’m meant to occupy, would it be possible for me to just delegate to an army of sous chefs? It could happen.
Even as my sleep-addled mind dwells on the possibilities, creating a daisy-chain of command that could be transposed onto a multinational culinary business, the door swings open to reveal Demeter. In the pale of morning, she appears younger, unsettlingly vulnerable, the lines of her face gentled. Her curls fall in vine-tangled rivulets, eclipsing the hunched shoulders, the folded arms. As I study her, she drops her hands to her sides, revealing a mottling of fresh bruises, like newborn scales.
I swallow. A memory of Minah unfurls: angles and spindles of bone, mouth pearled with gore, a history of hurt soaked into her skin.
It isn’t my place to ask.
“What happened to you?” The question comes anyway, pursued by ghosts.
Demeter’s expression does not change, her eyes haunted, old as the soil. She slips from the door to seat herself on my bed, a leg crossed beneath her hips, hands latticed about the curve of a knee. “Did you sleep well?”
“I… slept. I guess.” I’m not used to having an unfamiliar woman on my bed. I’m barely used to Minah’s absence, to the knowledge that I won’t find her in the kitchen, a song on her lips. I clear my throat, scoot back. “Can I help you with anything? You need someone beaten up?”
Demeter doesn’t smile, arching forward to drape fingertips on my thigh. I wince. “Who was she?”
“Minah.” Her name is a bright, sharp pain.
Demeter’s expression flickers. A muscle in her cheek judders, stills. I pin my breath to the roof of my mouth, the stem of my spine broken into spasms. I fight the memories down: her smile, her hands; her walk, like music is running through her spine; the jut of her cheekbones and the sweep of her lashes; a gold-limned vision of Minah
, bracing against the dawn, exultant, embers in that black river of hair. She laughed as I pulled her inside, beating out the flames. I have never seen anyone look so happy.
The goddess retrieves her hand and curls her fingers around the crook of an elbow. It takes another moment before she raises her gaze, mouth pinched with rue. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever fucking do that again. Don’t you ever fucking dare. Don’t—don’t—” The words burst in fits and starts, and I choke on them as anger metastasizes into an infinitely more complicated emotion. “Don’t ever fucking do that again. Just. Don’t.”
“I won’t.” No platitudes, no exaggerated contrition. And for a moment, I love her and the way she perches at the rim of my bed, silvered by the morning, like she has salvation to spare and all I have to do is reach out and ask.
“So what are you doing here? Somehow, I don’t see you as the femme-fatale kind of goddess, seducing acolytes with a saucy wiggle of your hips.” My voice stays raw, a chain smoker’s husk.
“Good eye.” A genuine smile, this time, inlaid with something cynical. “I wanted a chance to see what you are up close.”
What. Not who. “You mean the tattoos.”
“Yes.”
“They’ll behave.”
Demeter says nothing, holds my stare for a moment or six, before she dips her head in acknowledgment. In a voice almost too soft to be heard, she says: “You’ll need them, I suppose.”
“Anyway, you going to—wait. What did you just say?”
She doesn’t reply, rising instead, silks trailing across brown skin, suddenly inaccessible as the Mother Mary. “Get ready. We leave in twenty minutes.”
WE LEFT IN eight.
Why? Because nothing is funnier than towing a Chinese man, hair foamy with shampoo, mouth frothing with toothpaste, out of the shower, I suppose. I’m crammed into a white shirt and black pants, both grease-streaked and reeking of burnt fat; tied into an apron that might have once been merely filthy, and then strapped into shoes that stink of someone else’s feet. After that, I’m hoisted into the back of a van and left to puzzle at my half-washed condition.
A panel in the bulkhead slides open about ten minutes into our teeth-rattling journey, and Poseidon’s voice booms through the slit. “How are you doing?”
I drill a finger into a still-soapy ear. “Probably worse than you.”
He laughs gustily, and the world swerves into a hard right.I ram a shoulder into the wall and drag a hiss between my teeth, moments before I’m flung to the other side. Thump. This time, cranium connects with aluminum, and my vision sparks white. But the good thing about being a reformed criminal, a fairweather thug who occasionally still muscles for a living, is that this really isn’t that unfamiliar.
Head spinning, I crawl up to the bulkhead and hook my hands through the opening, peer through the divide. To my surprise, Demeter’s driving, fingers barely grazing the wheel, a cigarette between bared teeth. The window is open; as I watch, she leans out, slaps a hand against the door and screeches something in Greek.
“Time of the month?” The van jolts to the right before she recovers, correcting our trajectory.
I need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
Poseidon takes a long look over a shoulder and laughs again, teeth flashing white. “She doesn’t like yoking our son to the road.”
“Son?” I run my eyes over the inside of the van. To all outward appearances, it is a vehicle, and nothing but a vehicle, so help me traffic department, empty except for a few taped-down boxes and a disgruntled Chinese man.
“Areion.” Poseidon’s reply is almost off-hand, summoning a twitch in Demeter. Whatever’s going on, she disapproves of this, of him, of his nonchalance, his disinterest in their two-ton offspring.
I think about the purple-black marks flowering on Demeter’s skin, the stories of the Grecian pantheon. I don’t ask; I don’t want to know. But even as I cozy myself with the delusion of indifference, the image continues to cycle, eventually blending with a memory of Minah.
We don’t stop. Demeter’s a competent driver if a reckless one, taking corners like a stuntwoman. Cars beep, slam their brakes; Demeter slices between red buses, a knife through hot butter. I rack up more concussions, but we survive the trip. She parks and the two disembark before Poseidon releases me from my cage. I wobble out, jelly-kneed, squinting against the gray sun.
“Here we are!” Poseidon announces, scooping an arm about my shoulders.
I blink and take in the vista: another consortium of shophouses cobbled from brown brick, unattractive and dull (except, perhaps, for the graffiti spray-painted across one wall); a woman with a warning grin, not quite human, not quite nightmare. School children dart past, laughing, oblivious to the old man urinating in the corner, the piss forking and lacing across the pavement.
“Where’s here, exactly?” I look away as the geriatric zips up and scratches his nuts.
“Your”—Poseidon, dressed today in a straight-cut black sweater and expensive jeans, bobs an awkward bow—“new kingdom! Your castle of condiments, your bastion of basil.”
“This is the soup kitchen that you’ll be working at,” Demeter slinks up from behind, cat-silent, tense. She makes eye contact with Poseidon before looking away, the ghost of a sneer mauling her face. “And don’t worry. Poseidon isn’t in charge.”
“Oh, come now, Demeter. Is that how you treat your husband?” He reaches for her, only to have the goddess yank her shoulder away.
“Don’t.”
The faintest crackle of power, earth and ocean, soil and sea, before the two separate, smiles on their faces, tension in their spines, actors who’ve played out the same conversation six million times. I clench my fists, and Bob wakes the legion. We wait. But nothing happens. Demeter prowls forward, enters a door unmarked by signage and bracketed by cloudy windows. Poseidon shrugs and follows, his grin effortless, confident, patriarchal.
We go in. The premises are large, larger than I expected: roomy enough to hold at least sixty men. More, if they’re willing to squeeze into the corners and cram like sardines. Tables and benches are arranged like ribs, bracketed by food stations; the kitchen is partitioned away by a low wall. Sequestered in a narrow corridor, a door with the universal symbol for a defecation-safe zone.
“Impressed?” asks Poseidon.
“That depends. Which answer gets me a bed without bed bugs?”
On cue, he roars his amusement and smashes a hand between my shoulderblades, a blow that nearly crumples me in half. I straighten as he struts away, already indifferent to my existence, his eyes on a new prize: a pair of young women, fawn-like in their restless, leggy beauty. I pick my composure up, walk myself to where Demeter stands in front of a colossal fridge, arguing feverishly with a pale, unsmiling man.
“Hi?”
Demeter doesn’t turn, raises a finger. “One minute.”
The tempo of the conversation accelerates. Demeter and the man dance between languages, slinging English and Greek and something unidentifiable with a liquid, angry grace.
“Um.”
Hand gestures are being mobilized.
“Um.”
“One moment—”
“There’s a roach in the pot.”
The lie achieves its desired outcome. Both Demeter and the man leap, argument discarded in the wake of a common adversary, and I stand quietly until the two figure out my ruse. It doesn’t take long. They glare. I smile. “It kills me to have to interrupt such an important conversation, but someone decided it was very important to have me take a thirty-six-hour flight and then make me go to work the very next day. I feel like there are earth-shattering issues at work here, and I’d hate to cause the end of the world because I was too shy to ask what I’m supposed to do.”
More glaring.
“Too much? I’ll stop.”
To my mild surprise, the pale man laughs; a hacking, machine-gun noise that borders on drugged hysteria. He grins, and like everyone else in my life,
his dentition is much too sharp. “I like new toy, Demeter.”
“Employee,” the goddess corrects.
“A mortal?” His gasp is as theatrical as the hand that twitches up to shield his mouth. The man looks me over again. He’s tall. And shaggy. Black hair, threaded into a map of braids, flows from a widow’s peak, carpeting him like a pelt. A musk clings to him, not immediately unpleasant, but I recognize the base notes, an abattoir palette that makes me stiffen instantly. “I thought we only serve mortals.”
He chortles at his joke. No one else laughs. I give Demeter a quizzical look, and she reciprocates with a stare that announces in block letters I’M NOT DOING THIS WITH YOU.
“Veles,” she sighs, clearly unimpressed.
“Come on! Is clever joke. You people need sense of laughter,” he declares, shaking his head, reaching back to tighten the strings of his apron. Forearms bulge below his rolled-up sleeves, the weathered skin tattooed with wolves.
“Humour,” I blurt out.
“What?”
“It’s ‘sense of humour.’ Not ‘sense of—’”
Veles flaps a massive hand. “Same thing. Don’t be pedant.”
I clack my mouth shut. Demeter, too old to roll her eyes, nonetheless displays a hint of churlishness, jabbing a finger at the fridge, mouthing a warning at Veles and gesturing at me to follow. I fall into step behind her, hesitantly returning the man-mountain’s ebullient thumbs-up.
“So, who’s Veles? My Greek mythology isn’t up to snuff, but—”
“Nobody of any significance anymore,” Demeter says, almost sadly. “Once, the Slavic people knew Veles as a god of dark, growing things. The earth and the water, the forest and its wolves. But Christianity tore his worship to shreds. He became their saint, and then their devil, and then nothing at all.”
Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth Page 6