by Mur Lafferty
Oh, God. She was divine.
She smiled at me, seeing my recognition. Daniel gaped at me, paying no attention to her.
“What the fuck is going on? Kazuko dissolves a three headed dog, and then you disappear and say you got the souls back from Hades?”
“She will tell you everything in a moment,” Kazuko said, taking both our arms. “We need to leave.”
We ran down the hall. I purposefully had to slow myself to allow them to keep up.
Charon, inexplicably, was waiting for us.
He started the ferry the moment we stepped aboard. We chugged across Styx much faster this time. Once we were going, he handed the controls of the ferry to the little girl in the flowered dress and walked up to us.
He took my hand. “Do you have Hermes? Did you save them?”
I grinned at him, ignoring Daniel’s sharp look. “He’s with me. And I got the souls. But Hades won’t be tied up for long.”
Charon nodded and smiled. “Once we reach the other side, you’ll be safe.”
I heard Hades roar deep within the caves and got the distinct impression that we should never return.
#
On the far side, I asked Charon what stake he had in the orphaned souls.
“I catalogue them. It is part of what I do. And I knew there were some there that didn’t belong, some I didn’t ferry across; this upsets the balance.”
We shook his hand and got off the boat.
We passed the waiting souls, Kazuko and I definitely more relieved.
“So you have your own little friend in your head?” Daniel asked, not looking at me.
Hermes chuckled inside my head. I felt a small stab of guilt, but I lifted my chin. “We couldn’t have gotten through that without him. And you still have Odin.”
He wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“What’s wrong, Daniel?”
“I didn’t fuck the guy inside my head.”
“Ugh, you’re so crude,” I said. “Like I planned any of this? And what the hell do you care?”
Daniel ignored me and looked at Kazuko, “And what happened to you and that dog?”
I could feel her even though I didn’t look at her. She blazed like a fire; something had changed during her battle with Cerberus. I was surprised Daniel couldn’t feel it too.
“I stopped the dog and then came to find you. You will get answers in time.”
Daniel snorted. “Yeah. But will they be the ones I need?”
He stomped ahead of us and walked alone. I looked at the powerful woman at my side and she smiled. I shrugged. Daniel would get over it. He’d have to. It was pretty clear he needed us both.
CHAPTER NINE
The sky had darkened considerably, even though my body clock said it was midday. I squinted at the gloom and wished, briefly, for the fake beautiful days I used to have in Heaven. In particular, those days when I lived with Daniel: the Daniel who loved me. The fake Daniel.
Man, sometimes fantasy seemed much better than reality. Daniel hadn’t spoken much to me since we’d gotten away from Hades. And I still felt slightly dizzy from Hermes’s presence.
I wanted to reassure Daniel, but I didn’t want to lie. For one thing, Hermes was still there – granted, he sat quietly in the back of my mind, but I could still sense him. Perhaps it was with his help that I could sense Kazuko so well now, too.
How did Daniel not see it? She walked ahead of us, back straight, step brisk. If pressed, I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint exactly what was different, but I knew she had changed somehow.
Daniel broke my concentration with a startled, “Who the hell...?”
Ahead of us on the road stood four Asian girls, each with long black hair. They looked as though each was two years older than next youngest; the youngest looking about ten years old and the eldest sixteen. At first glance they looked like sisters, but as they got closer, I got an uncomfortable feeling.
“I thought the road to hell was walked alone?” I asked Kazuko.
She frowned for the first time. “It is. We should not meet anyone here.”
As we approached, the girls became audible to us, and it was clear they were in a heated argument.
“I’m tired of searching,” the youngest said. “I want to sit down!”
The oldest shook her head. “We haven’t explored all the underworlds. There are many to go; we’ve only explored seven.”
The next youngest sighed. “No, we’ve been kicked out of eight. How many more are there?”
The next youngest just stood there, sniffling, as if she had just finished up a good cry.
A chill ran through me as I studied the girls. Although they were obviously different ages, it was clear they were all identical. How was that possible?
The tired one, the youngest, pulled at the oldest girl’s shirt. “Dae, look. People.” She pointed to us.
The weeping one looked hopeful. “Maybe they can help.”
Kazuko looked them all up and down. “You have no souls.” She was matter-of-fact in her bluntness, but the statement elicited a sob from the twelve-year-old.
“Wait, how can they be souls without souls?” Daniel asked.
“Excellent question, sir,” snapped the fourteen-year-old.
The oldest put her hand on his sister’s shoulder. “Hush, Min.” To us, she said, “I’m Dae. These are my, ah, sisters. Min,” the angry fourteen-year-old, “Sun,” the weeping twelve-year-old, “and Bo-Bae” the wide-eyed ten-year-old.
“Oh, just tell them, Dae,” Min said. “We’re clones. We can’t find an afterlife that will accept four girls cloned from one.”
“Wait, you’re what?” I asked.
“Clones. We are from South Korea. Some people wanted to see if they could clone the same scientist four times, once every two years, then raise us differently,” Dae said. “Something went wrong and we found out about each other and managed to run away. We died together, looking for the woman we consider our mother. Now we are just trying to find a place to rest.”
Daniel began his standard introduction of us, but I wasn’t listening. I stepped forward and held up my hand focusing on Dae, who seemed the most receptive of the bunch, and placed my hand below her neck. She looked surprised, but didn’t protest.
“What are you doing?” Min said, and raised her hand to knock mine away. Without looking at her, I reached out with my other hand and caught her wrist. She blurted her surprise but I didn’t lose my focus on Dae.
The soul was there, inside Dae. It was small and feeble, but still it flickered there. I let Min go and stepped back from Dae. “You do have a soul. It’s small and fractured, but it’s there.”
“Are you a god?” Sun asked with awe in her voice, and her eyes nearly hurt me with their need.
“No, sorry. It’s just that I, uh, sense souls. I guess. We’re trying to find some imprisoned souls down here, and I’m the bloodhound.”
The brief hope in her eyes died. “Oh.”
“Where are you going?” Bo-bae asked.
“The next hell, I guess,” Daniel said. “We go where the road takes us. You?”
Dae pointed at Min. “Min says Anubis will help us, so we’re trying to find him.”
Min nodded eagerly, her face losing some of its bad-tempered, pinched look. “According to stories, Anubis has a male and female aspect, two parts of the same whole. I thought he might at least listen to us, as four parts.”
“But we’re not parts!” Sun wailed.
Min glared at her. “That is true. We’re seven different girls. Very different girls.” She cast a withering eye at Sun, who had started to cry again.
Still thinking of the soul that flickered inside Dae, I shook my head. “No, you’re not parts. But you’re not wholes, either. I don’t understand it.”
I looked at Kazuko. She shrugged. “Of the gods, Anubis is as good as anyone now. I was hoping to avoid him, but we can go there, if you like. He could help the two of you get to your answers as well.”
“You mean you’ll help us?” Bo-bae said.
“Wait a sec,” Daniel said. “You’re not damned souls or anything, are you? Murderers, thieves, uh…” he paused, thinking, probably, of what horrible things pre-teen and teen girls could have done to deserve hell. He finally finished with, “…drivers who take up two parking spaces?”
Min pointed to Dae. “She’s lost her virginity already.”
Dae looked at her clone coolly and crossed her arms. “And you think that would damn me?”
Daniel snorted. “Last I checked, Min, being a tattletale doesn’t damn you to hell, so you’re safe so far.”
Min bristled as the other clones, save Sun, laughed. Since the girls were going our way, we walked on together, our little group suddenly grown to seven.
#
I wonder if we would have found the realm of Anubis if Kazuko hadn’t been purposefully leading us to it. Instead of a grand building, castle, or a mountain cave, we encountered merely a hole in the ground, covered by a dirty blanket.
“You serious?” Daniel said as Kazuko pulled aside the blanket to reveal roughly hewn steps.
I led the way in, Min and Bo-bae at my heels, eager to find out what Anubis had to say.
“So have you met a lot of gods?” I asked.
“I don’t know the ones we haven’t met,” said Bo-bae. “The ones in hell, anyway.”
We had been walking down a tunnel, dimly lit by torches in the walls. I was too busy realizing how much I had missed talking with people other than Daniel and Kazuko that I didn’t notice the change in the tone of the echoes.
Min may have been overbearing and rude, but at least she had excellent reflexes. She threw her arm in front of me and Bo-bae, who gave a short shriek as she realized the end of the tunnel was a gargantuan pit.
Daniel and the other clones stepped aside as Kazuko came forward.
“Anubis,” she whispered.
I squinted and stepped backward into Daniel. Down below, a sharp-featured black dog sat on its haunches in the pit, its head level with the top, staring right at us. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see that steep steps wound around the pit to the bottom, ending at the feet of the great dog.
Also at the feet of the dog was a man with a bird’s head.
“And Thoth,” Kazuko continued, pointing at the man with the bird head. “He weighs the souls; Anubis passes judgment.”
Anubis opened his jaws and his obsidian teeth gleamed in the dim light. His voice was deep and gravely as if he had further depths of the earth within him. “Five to be judged.”
I looked around. “Five? I thought there were four of you.”
Anubis blinked slowly. “The woman Kate has yet to be properly judged. The four half-girls named Dae Min and the man named Daniel Joseph Hudson.”
“Daniel?” I asked.
“What the hell?” asked Daniel.
“Half-girls?” demanded Min.
Anubis ignored them. “Who speaks for the half-girls?”
Daniel still stood in shock. Kazuko didn’t speak. Dae cleared her throat behind me.
“Please,” whispered Sun.
“Uh, me, I guess,” I said, stepping forward, careful of the edge of the pit.
“And who speaks for Daniel?”
I opened my mouth again, but Kazuko stepped forward and drew her sword. She placed it in front of her and faced the god. “The goddess Izanami speaks for Daniel Hudson.”
CHAPTER TEN
We didn’t really have a lot of time for a “holy shit” moment just then. Right after Kazuko had made her pronouncement, Anubis ordered me and the clones down into the pit. I bit back all questions and left them, Daniel staring at Kazuko/Izanami in disbelief.
“I can’t believe this,” I whispered, focusing on my shock at Kazuko’s revelation rather than freaking out about the handrail-free steps carved into the wall. “Did you know about this?” I whispered to Hermes, hoping he would respond.
Of course I did.
“And you didn’t tell me why?”
She clearly had a good reason for her disguise.
“Why are you shocked?” Dae asked, assuming I was talking to myself. “I thought at least one of you was a god.”
“We didn’t know she was a god,” I said. “Well, at least not at first. All I knew was Izanami appointed Kazuko as our guard and then left us. I didn’t know she stayed in disguise, or whatever. I don’t even know if there was ever a Kazuko, or if she was a host of the god, or what.”
“So how are you going to represent us? You don’t know anything about us,” asked Min.
I glanced down at the feet of Anubis, where he and Thoth waited patiently. “I don’t know,” I said. “Anything I should know about you, or your, uh, mom?”
“She was a brilliant scientist who died five months ago, right after we found her,” Dae said from in front of me. “She led the field in genetics and cloning research. We were her finest achievement.”
I wracked my brain to figure out how to represent – defend? – these seven girls I didn’t know. What if they did belong in Hell just by virtue of being humanly manufactured?
Although I wasn’t relishing the thought of facing the huge dog, the end of the stairs came too soon as I still had no idea of what I was to do.
As we stepped onto the rock at the bottom of the pit, Thoth approached.
Bow to the judge of the dead, Hermes whispered. I did so, awkwardly, and the girls followed my head, much more gracefully.
The bird head lowered to acknowledge us and then indicated a large scale at Anubis’s feet.
The dog spoke again. “I weigh your soul against a feather. Thoth determines the result. If you are too heavy of sin, Ammut devours you. Ammut is not here currently, alas, so I will do the devouring. If you are light enough, you ascend.”
“Ascend?” Sun said hopefully.
The bird head nodded once. He gestured again.
“What do we do?” Bo-bae said, her voice shaky.
“Weigh the souls,” said Anubis.
The clones looked at me expectantly. I looked at Thoth, Anubis, the clones, and then up the stairs to where I knew Daniel and Kazuko – Izanami? – waited. I tried to remember that we were on a metaphysical plane, not physical.
I remembered the flicker of recognition in Dae’s chest when I touched her. I beckoned to her and she came willingly. “Are you ready?” I asked.
She smiled sadly. “I’ve been ready since the day we died.”
I put my hand on her chest and felt that discordant flicker again. I concentrated like I had in Hades’s realm, trying to coax the souls from solid gemstone.
Finally it came to me, the warm sphere nestling into my hand. The light left Dae’s eyes and she crumpled, her body evaporating like smoke.
“What did you do to her?” Min said.
The soul was smaller than others I’d taken, and striations interrupted the smooth flow of soul-stuff inside, so I concentrated on it, learning about Dae, her life and loves, her remarkable story. As I held it, the striations disappeared and it rounded out to look unmistakably like a soul.
I took Dae’s soul over to the scale and carefully lowered it to the waiting tray. The feather didn’t budge from its low position.
Sun smiled at me, tears rolling. “It’s true. You healed her.”
“Is that it?” I asked Anubis.
“It is merely part of a whole,” he grumbled. “Weigh them all together.”
The clones gasped. “Together we have to weigh less than one whole person?” asked Bo-bae.
Sun stepped forward confidently. “I’m next. And thank you.”
I smiled at her, embarrassed by her complete trust. Her soul nearly leaped into my hand, and her body dissipated like Dae’s.
The other clones came to me, one confidently, one reluctantly. I removed each soul, watched it reform and heal, and added it to the stack of shining spheres. Each was identical, which I hadn’t expected, as they had been such different girls. They w
ere all incredibly light, although with the addition of Min, the feather rose just a little. With all four souls, the scales tipped one way, and then the other, and then balanced perfectly.
I blew out, only then realizing that I’d been holding my breath.
Anubis nodded his huge head slowly and said, “They are yours.”
I nodded and took the souls back, handling each one carefully as I stored them in my pack.
“Now for Daniel.”
I stepped back and watched Daniel. While Anubis had judged the girls, he and Kazuko – I still couldn’t think of her as Izanami – had descended the steps behind us. They walked forward calmly. I tried to catch Daniel’s eye, but he didn’t look at me.
“Why is he being judged?” I asked, but Kazuko waved me back.
She turned to Daniel and asked, “Are you ready?”
He nodded once, and then his good eye went to me, anguish and fear creasing his face. “Kate, I’m sorry.”
“Wait, why?” I asked. Then I realized what was going to happen. “No, wait, don’t you dare!”
He smiled then, and Kazuko placed her hand on his chest. Just like the clones, Daniel’s face relaxed and he fell. I tried not to worry about his corporeal body as he dissipated, but I had to fight back tears as he became nothing more than a shining globe.
I couldn’t stop myself from stepping forward, past Kazuko to stare at it. “What is that?”
Daniel’s soul did not glow with the soft golden light that other souls did. It was laced with ribbons of red, green, silver and blue, with touches of black here and there.
Kazuko silenced me with a stern look and approached the scale. I could tell immediately that this was not going to end well. The soul dropped the scales down, pushing the feather high.
“No, wait! He’s a good guy; he went to heaven when he died! He’s already been judged!” I said, pleading to Anubis.
“Unlike the half-girls, this one holds too much soul within him.” He reached out a paw and Thoth placed the soul, so tiny compared to the god’s paw, into it. Anubis held the soul close and sniffed it. “Ahhh… Odin,” he said, and the green ribbons left the soul to hover above like a streamer. “An aspect of Izanami, and her son Kagut-Suchi” he said, and the silver and red-colored ribbons left the soul. “And,” he sniffed again, sounding honestly surprised. “Goodness. Horus, what are you doing in there?” The blue color left Daniel’s soul.