by Helen Scott
“Oh my goodness, that’s such a relief!” Ellie could feel her shoulders slump as the sense of freedom overwhelmed her.
“Did you think we were trapped here?” Amusement played on Hecate’s face.
“I was worried about that possibility, yes.”
Hecate harrumphed at Ellie. “I would never allow myself to be trapped somewhere.”
“Can we head to Alec now?”
“Take my hands.” Hecate held both hands out in front of her and smiled warmly.
Ellie was unsure, but she had to try. Besides, if Hecate left and the brothers didn’t come back, then she was screwed. She gently placed her hands in Hecate’s and waited for something to happen. When Hecate opened her eyes and looked around, confusion flitted across her face.
“Well, that should have worked.”
“Do you know why it didn’t?” A knot of anxiety formed in Ellie’s stomach.
“I think so, but the only way I know how to get around it isn’t going to be fun for you, provided you still want to come with me.”
“I do. I need to find Alec and make sure he’s okay.” Ellie had a growing sense of dread whenever she thought about him. If she didn’t find him soon, she was worried something terrible would happen to him.
“Not that you care about him or anything,” Hecate said, glancing sidelong at Ellie.
Brushing past the remark, Ellie said, “So what’s next?”
Hecate smiled at her. “How do you fancy a trip to the underworld?”
Chapter 18
Ellie dropped Hecate’s hands, and her mouth gaped as she stared at the goddess. “I didn’t really have dying on the agenda for today. I was thinking it would be more of a saving kind of day.”
“You don’t have to die to go to the underworld, provided you are with someone who lives there, like either me or Persephone.” Hecate chuckled.
“Okay…” Ellie stomach was filled with butterflies, and the familiar tension of her anxiety crept up the back of her neck. She wished she had another choice, but she had to trust the goddess.
“Do you know anywhere in this system of tunnels where there is a crossroads?”
“There was a Y intersection back there, would that work?”
“Perfect!” Hecate grabbed Ellie by the hand and strode off in the direction of the intersection.
“Here.” Ellie gestured to the multiple directions someone could go.
“Very good. This will work nicely. Hold on to me, and don’t let go, no matter what you hear or see.”
“Is this a good idea?” The anxiety was crawling up the base of her skull and making her chest tight.
“You want to help the brothers, right?” Ellie nodded. “You’ll be fine. Just do as I say, and no matter what, don’t let go.” Hecate smiled encouragingly at Ellie.
“Okay, let’s do this.”
They held hands, and Hecate moved them so they were standing in the middle of the three directions. Then they were falling. Ellie let out a little yelp of surprise and squeezed her eyes shut as panic clawed up her throat. Hecate’s grip on her hands was painful, but Ellie was happy for it since it let her know she was still attached.
They landed—as light as a feather—on the ground, their toes touching and eventually their heels, then all their weight was on their feet, and Ellie no longer had that falling sensation. She opened her eyes and looked around, almost immediately wishing she hadn’t.
“Welcome to the underworld.” Hecate released one of Ellie’s hands and smoothed out her flowing white dress.
“Uh, thanks, I think.” Ellie could barely see anything, but what she could see was unsettling. Her feet rested on the dirt floor, but there was something that made her feel as though everything was uneven. The jagged rocks that made up the walls jutted out into the tunnel from all angles, some of which almost looking like hands. Ellie could almost taste the smell invading her nostrils it was so acrid. The place reeked of sweat and fear.
“It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
“I’ll take your word for it.” Ellie tried to cover her nose and mouth, but the smell was pervasive.
“It’s just a short walk from here, and we can jump out to Cambridge.”
“Wonderful.” Hecate set off walking at a brisk pace that left Ellie almost jogging behind her. “Wait, what about your dogs?”
“Oh, they only manifest when I need them,” Hecate said without slowing down. “I am perfectly safe in the underworld. It’s where I live, after all. So they are off doing whatever it is they do when they aren’t protecting me.” Her face clouded at that, as though she’d never thought about where the dogs go before.
An eerie light pervaded the place. It wasn’t yellow, but it wasn’t green or white, and it all kind of melted together. They were only a few feet from where they landed when Ellie heard the first scream. She pulled on Hecate’s hand.
“What was that?” Ellie’s anxiety snapped back into place, making her heart beat an uneven rhythm.
“It is the underworld, my dear.” Hecate’s face filled with empathy as she patiently explained to Ellie. “Most people are here to be punished for their crimes in life, and they usually don’t like those punishments.”
“Oh.” Ellie swallowed hard.
“Come on.” Hecate tugged at her hand, and they started moving again.
As they progressed down the tunnel, the air filled with sounds of moaning, people begging for whatever was happening to them to stop. They pleaded for food/sleep/water/to be left alone/for company. Whatever was or wasn’t happening to them sounded awful. The noise became a cacophony ringing in Ellie’s ears. The moment she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, she saw her first truly horrifying sight. She froze in place, losing her connection to Hecate. Ellie’s hands covered her mouth in shock as she backed away from the thing on the wall.
“What is that?” Ellie asked, her voice shrill in her own ears. Hecate had been walking so fast that she had gone past whatever it was. When she heard Ellie’s voice and realized they weren’t holding hands anymore, she ran back to Ellie. The thing on the wall was moving closer, and Ellie didn’t know whether to scream or run in the other direction. Hecate reached out and pried one of Ellie’s hands away from her mouth. Ellie had the sensation of falling, and as she looked at their hands together, she realized hers were paper white.
Hecate came to stand in front of Ellie, blocking the thing from view. “Don’t do that again. Being in the underworld without an escort will literally suck the life out of you—that is, if a lost soul like the one behind me doesn’t get to you first. They can hijack your body at the last second and use it to try to escape, which makes for a very unhappy Hades, which then leads to that soul being condemned to Tartarus,” Hecate said in a low tone as though she didn’t want to draw attention to it.
Ellie’s heart felt like it stopped for a moment. She had almost gotten herself killed. She took a deep breath, trying to use her belly to breathe—like that counselor had taught her—to help with her anxiety.
“How can a soul be lost in the underworld; isn’t that kind of why it’s here?” Ellie asked, trying to focus on something else.
“Yes, but if people are unwilling to move on from the life they had, then their souls can become lost. They slowly decay over time until there is nothing left. They repeat actions or conversations they still agonize over.”
The blob on the wall oozed downward for the most part, except one tendril, which oozed upward. It was clearly confused and in pain.
“Can’t you do something? Put it out of its misery?”
“I could.” Hecate took a deep breath as though she knew Ellie was going to balk at the answer she was about to give. “Before you get mad, just remember gods and goddesses have to follow rules too. The reason I don’t help is because it’s not my job. If I changed the path of a soul, then Hades would have my head. I might be the goddess of magic and crossroads, but that doesn’t mean I have the power or status to do whatever I want. Part of wha
t I do that is unrelated to the mortal realm is escort Persephone to Hades in autumn and then back to her mother, Demeter, in the spring. It’s not fun, but it’s part of my role, just like helping a lost soul is forbidden.”
“I understand.” Ellie offered Hecate a sympathetic look. She knew how hard it could be to do a job or live somewhere you hated when you didn’t have another choice.
“Come on, we are almost past the Fields of Punishment. Then, once we pass the Elysian Fields, we will be able to jump out.”
“Let’s go.” Ellie wanted to escape this place with her soul intact, so the sooner they left, the better.
Hecate smiled, and they started walking. Ellie was jogging again to keep up with Hecate’s long legs.
As they made their way past the last of the screaming souls, the sounds morphed from anguish to pleasure.
“Are they having sex?”
“Probably. There is a lot of sex that happens in the Elysian Fields. It’s paradise. Unsurprisingly, people get frisky in paradise.”
“Wow.”
“Come on.”
The light in this part of the tunnel was definitely warmer, not so ghoulish. Ellie looked to her left and could see the waves lapping the shore, and in the distance was an island.
“That’s the Island of the Blessed,” Hecate said as though she was reading Ellie’s mind. “It’s for particularly heroic warriors or people who were blessed by the gods.”
“I had no idea the underworld was so complex.”
“Did you think it was just a giant soul soup where rapists mingled with heroes?”
“Yeah, kinda, to be honest.”
“Well, everyone has their place, with the exception of lost souls. The sinners go to the Fields of Punishment, the heroes go to the Elysian Fields, or if they are very lucky, the Island of the Blessed, and everyone in between goes to the Asphodel Meadows. There are a couple of other regions, but they aren’t as heavily populated as these three.”
Once they were passed the Elysian Fields, there was the biggest structure Ellie had ever seen outside of a city, and even then it was enormous, just sitting in the middle of a gigantic cavern. It looked like a Gothic palace of some kind, with smaller detached buildings off to the sides that almost looked like dollhouses in comparison. As they approached, Ellie realized the smaller buildings weren’t actually small; the other structure was just so enormous it dwarfed all the other buildings.
“Here we are,” Hecate said, the relief of making it to wherever they were evident in her voice.
She opened the door to a lavish mansion. It was huge. Floor-to-ceiling columns ran the length of the center of the house, and all the rooms came off either side. Ellie stared in pure amazement. Her eyes followed the columns up to an incredible fresco-painted ceiling. Although there were no cherubs or angels in the painting, there were plenty of animals. The sky was so realistic that Ellie almost forgot she was looking at a painting. The fact that this was one of the small buildings made her curious as to what the big building actually was or who it belonged to.
“Ready to get back to your world?”
“Yes and no. This is fascinating.”
“Trust me, you don’t want to stay. The sun is a powerful force in your life, and you might not realize exactly how influential it is until you have to give it up. Let us hope you never have to find out.”
“I believe that.” Ellie already hated winter enough as it was. She couldn’t imagine living underground all year round.
“Okay, take both hands again.” Ellie slipped her free, cold hand into Hecate’s clammy one, and they jumped to the surface. For the first time since Ellie had woken up to find Alec gone, she felt like she was making progress, plus it helped to be away from the stench of the underworld.
“This is the right cemetery. Now we just need to find the exact location,” Hecate said in a hushed voice as Ellie still tried to get her bearings.
Hecate took the paintbrushes out of a pocket in her robes and began chanting again. The vibrations in the brushes were low, but as Hecate turned in a circle, they increased. Once she was facing the right way, they began walking.
“It’s this one.” Hecate gestured to a mausoleum, and the brushes vibrated so frantically in her hand that they rolled off.
It had taken them at least ten minutes to get there, and the whole time Ellie had been anxious to arrive, but now they were here, she was terrified. The stone filigree around the mausoleum made it look extremely expensive and old. It was probably both, judging by the way the landscape had built up around it. There had been a name carved in the top at one point, but the letters had long since rubbed off as the stone aged and was exposed to the elements. All that were left were some minor indentations.
Ellie drew near, half expecting Circe to jump out and destroy them right there. Nothing happened as she approached though, so she gently pushed on the wrought-iron-covered door and slid it open almost effortlessly. Clearly, this was a door that had seen frequent use recently. Ellie only hoped it was because of Circe and her undead minions and not someone who was recently buried here.
With the door open, they made their way inside. The mausoleum was dank and dark and exactly what she imagined it would be like when the brothers had mentioned it, except there were no coffins, dead bodies, or sarcophagi. The entire thing appeared to be empty. As soon as her eyes adjusted, Ellie could see the hole in the wall at the back.
“Are you ready to go down?” Hecate asked as she stood at the edge of the opening looking over her shoulder at Ellie.
Ellie picked her way around the loose stones on the floor to the gaping hole in the back of the mausoleum as silently as possible. Her anxiety doubled as it clawed at her skin, making her feel helpless and weak. Her mind was telling her there was no way she could rescue the boys, but she had to try. She knew no matter how bad her anxiety was, or how much her brain told her it wouldn’t work, if she didn’t try and something happened to them, then the guilt would consume her. With adrenaline finally starting to kick in, Ellie stared down a pathway that dissolved into darkness. She had no idea what lay ahead or where this path went.
“We should have a plan before we head down there,” she croaked out.
“Now you want a plan? You let me escort you through the underworld, and now you realize maybe you should have a plan?” Hecate chuckled. “I forgot how headstrong mortals could be.”
“I ken, it’s a wee bit late, but I cannae help feelin’ like if I go down there without a plan, I’ll die.” Her Scots was thick with fear.
“Okay, well, how about we go as far as we can and just see what’s around. Once we have seen the place, we can come back up and formulate a better plan.”
“No, that’s not good enough.”
“Fine! Well what’s your idea, mortal?” Hecate scowled at her.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you. I was thinking, Hal said something about your figuring out how to separate your powers from the torches, right?” Hecate nodded her on. “Well, when we get down there, you cast your spell, I free the brothers, and they grab the torches. What do you think?”
“Provided we don’t get captured,” Hecate pointed out.
“Of course.”
“Well, it’s decent. What if my spell fails?”
“You are the goddess of magic, Hecate, it’ll work.” Ellie smiled encouragingly at her.
“Okay, and any backups in case we get captured?”
“You work some magic to get us out of it.”
“What about the undead. They don’t really respond to magic.”
“They do to mine.”
“What?” Confusion clouded Hecate’s delicate features. She briefly placed her hands on each side of Ellie’s face, and Ellie watched as she saw Hecate put two and two together and realize that she wasn’t a daughter of Zeus, or even blessed by him, but was part of something equally as old, something she was only just beginning to believe in.
“Come on. Let’s go get the boys,” Ellie said as she
pulled out of Hecate’s hands.
“And my torches!”
“Those too.” They smiled at each other and descended down the tunnel. The steep slope made them go slower than Ellie had expected, but it was good since it allowed them to keep clear eyes on what was ahead.
They shuffled deeper and deeper underground. The air became humid, and Ellie felt like she was drinking it more than breathing it. The light from her phone was the only thing that let them see they weren’t about to walk off a cliff or fall down a crack in the ground or something.
“How long have we been walking now?” Ellie whispered.
“Too long. We have to be out of the cemetery by now.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
The tunnel veered sharply to the left, and the sound of cars passing above them became obvious. The right side of the tunnel began to show moisture. The sound of traffic didn’t relent, and every time a larger vehicle passed overhead, some dirt floated down from the ceiling, making Ellie want to run as fast as she could to get out of this deathtrap of a tunnel.
“What are the chances of this tunnel caving in on us?” Ellie asked, voicing her fear.
“None.” Hecate looked around as they walked on, running her hands over the walls and ceiling; she looked disgusted but satisfied. “The tunnel is held up by magic. The dirt that was here, taking up this space, was compacted to form the walls and ceiling of the tunnel itself. The spell is crude, but I can see its bindings, and we are safe. Even if the magic were to fail, all that would happen is the dirt that has been compacted would expand again, filling in the empty space.”
“We would die though?”
“Not unless I jump us out first.”
“Fabulous.” Ellie felt only slightly relieved.
After another few minutes of walking, they found themselves facing a door, the dark wood stained with dirt and what looked like blood.
“Do you think it’s enchanted or anything?”
“Not from what I can tell,” Hecate said, bending over to examine the door. “I don’t see any magic attached to either side of it.”