When I woke it was still dark, no light peeked in through the windows. I reached around my head in a sleepy haze, looking for my cell phone. What could have possessed me to wake up before the sun?
But there was no cell phone. There were no windows to let in light.
Because I'm not in my own bed.
I sat up slowly. All of the memories from yesterdayâyester-wheneverâcame rushing back. Thanks to the new hell I found myself in, I knew of all kinds of monsters that could be poised under the bed, waiting patiently to grab my ankles and drag me away.
No need to throw off the blankets. I hadn't been covered and I was still wearing my shoes. Despite having slept in my dusty clothes, I felt infinitely better for having had some rest.
Jasper never needs to know. If he asks, the bed was lumpy.
Speaking of Jasper, what kind of mind control did he possess? In the dark I rubbed my face with both hands, breathing deeply to fend of the tendrils of panic I could already feel in the back of my brain.
In an alternate universe, I might have gone to the kitchen where I would undoubtedly find Jasper and asked him about mind control. Acted like a calm adult. But in this universe, the one with ancient gods and magic portals and control freaks, I vowed not to lie down and be the brunt of their cruel joke. So I summoned all of the anger and fear I felt at the hands of Jasper's tricks and turned it into something beautiful. Something furious.
I swung my feet over the side of the bed. They thudded to the floor. The darkness of the room threw my inner child into fitsâdon't look now but there's something under the bedâand my body tensed unnecessarily. I waited, testing the lengths of my new courage. Though nothing grabbed for me the tension did not leave my shoulders. I felt my way to the door, taking deliberate steps in the dark. When I found it, my hands trailed up and down until they landed on a knob. It didn't turn.
Not. Cool.
I gritted my teeth and I tried the knob again, turning in the other direction. It didn't budge. My chest closed up at the realization: they locked me in my own damn room like a misbehaving child or a dirty little secret.
Air flowed in and out of my nose in short spurts. My lips pressed together, my teeth clamped shut behind them. I wanted to scream. I ached to rip into something and tear it apart. My hands curled into fists.
And before I knew it I had taken a step back. A roar escaped my lips and in the dark I kicked the door open. In a moment of pure rage my body acted almost on its own.
Very cool.
Light streamed into the dark bedroom from the living room making me blink several times before stepping out of the dimness.
Stepping from the darkness and into enlightenment. Accompanying the Iliad, Plato's Allegory of the Cave was included on my advanced English syllabus last year. The man who escaped the cave was had no idea what waited for him outside of his imprisonment yet learned to accept the change, to embrace the new knowledge presented to him.
Allegory this was not. I knew exactly what waited for me in the light, Hector and Jasper, myths and war. But I wasn't about to return to the cave like the nameless character of Plat's allegory, back to ignorance and blindness, for any reason.
Two men sat expectantly on opposite sofas, conversation cut off by he sound of my violent entrance.
"Which one of you locked the door?" It seemed like a good place to start. I mentally patted myself on the back for speaking low and clear instead of growling.
Jasper sighed and raised a hand. "Guilty," he said. His voice held no remorse. It was devoid of emotion completely, like an automated message; his eyes bored into mine, both of us throwing looks that could kill and neither one of us perishing.
With a running start I leapt over the back of the couch and latched onto him, my hands around the Santa imposter's throat before Hector jumped up to me away. Jasper didn't even look phased. He hadn't moved at all. It wasn't much of an attack, but I'd felt more intimidating than he acted and his lack of reaction stung. Hector's hand held firmly to my forearm as he wrenched me off of Public Enemy Number Two but he hadn't pulled me away enough to stop the well-aimed kick to Jasper's shins.
"And you!" I grunted loudly as I squirmed out of Hector's grasp and spun on Public Enemy Number One, not allowing Jasper's lack of reaction to deter my fighting spirit. "You left me alone with a child-eating monster! It would've served you right if he mind controlled me to chop off my legs and feed them to him instead of putting me down for a nap."
Welcome to my new reality. I wanted to take the words back as soon as they left my mouth.
"You are not a child, therefore you had no reason to worry," he said matter-of-factly. As if that was supposed to make it better.
"He threatened to eat me!" I screeched.
"But I see that he did not."
The sound of flesh meeting flesh resonated around the room. I slapped him for leaving me, for his snarky comments, for being pretty, for every reason I had ever wanted to smack someone. Hell, let's throw global warming into the mix and call it a day. His head jerked with the impact.
No one moved. It immediately sunk in that I had just slapped a god. His face turned back towards me in a slow fashion, almost robotic. I thought for a second that he might strike me in retaliation or smite me for kicks; mythological expert I was not but I knew enough to know that the gods liked revenge. There was clever retribution in my future. His eyes flashed with fire as he considered it. But nobody moved. Reality chased away my desire to hurt something.
"I feel a little better now," I said to break the silence, my voice not meek but certainly less violent. No way was I going to apologize.
I no longer felt a desperate need for air; my lungs had settled into an easy pattern of expand, contract, expand, contract. It felt almost normal, if you ignored the rapid pace of my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. Gone was the confident girl who kicked down a down. "There has to be a better way to do this. You don't have to lock me up, it's not like I can go anywhere. I'm here, I've agreed to help. If you promise to keep a leash on your pet lamia, I promise to behave. Can we start over with some modicum of trust?"
I smiled at him. It wasn't genuine, but it was better than growling. I wanted to growl a lot these days.
"Jasper, leave us." Hector's voice was low and his response, while steady and controlled, lacked the fire it possessed just the day before. It was as if my slap had sapped all of the energy from his body out through his cheek. His forehead wrinkled, concentration taking away from the effortless confidence he often wore.
He didn't seem to be toying with me as I had become accustomed. I couldn't put my finger on what exactly felt so off about him. Hector stood there in the room with me, not Hades or the semi-god that needed a hit of the Nectar.
It felt very human.
That worried me and the worrying worried me some more.
The sound of Jasper's voice startled me. "Yes, my lord." He bowed to Hector, winked at me, and went to the portal without another word. I watched his back until it disappeared, trying very hard to figure him out. Sometimes I thought he hated being in the same room as me while other times he acted like we were old friends with inside jokes who winked at each other.
As soon as Jasper was gone, I turned back to Hector. "Does he live here? I mean," I gestured to the apartment space around me, "here, here?"
"Jasper was instructed to look after your well-being while you are a guest here." I snorted; guest? Really? "Food and sleep are necessary for human bodies and until the Fury resides within you, you will remain mostly human in the sense that you will need to take care of yourself." I didn't want to know what resides within you meant so, for once, I kept my mouth shut. "His chambers are elsewhere but think of this space as his day job; he'll arrive here every morning and leave here in the evening once his daily tasks are complete."
Not as calm as I wanted to portray, I demanded, "What about the mind control?"
Jasper, who hadn't quite left despite Hector's instructions, chimed in: "You were being difficult; I was just doing my job."
You suck at your job. "Difficult! I'll show you difficultâ" I made to head his direction but Jasper waved and stepped through the portal before I hardly moved a step.
"I gave him an order, Jasper followed it. Creative liberties were taken that I can ensure you will not be repeated. Are you satisfied yet?"
"No. You could have made him mind control me into helping you yesterday instead of putting on a show of stealing me off the street and bringing me here."
"It is much better when you agree to work with me of your own free will. My predecessor learned this the hard way." He did not leave room for me to ask the next burning question. "Take a walk with me; there is someone I would like you to meet."
When I didn't move, Hector rolled his eyes at me. "He was only following orders simply to look after your wellbeing," he asserted. "If you wish to place blame on anyone, I will take it gladly. Now, if you please?"
"What makes him the most qualified to look after me? He's basically the worst babysitter in history. I bet he doesn't even know CPR." When I babysat the neighbor kids their parents made sure I had life saving training; Jasper seemed vastly under qualified for the job. "That brings me to another issue: I don't want every Underworld inhabitant to have access to this space. I've been relatively reasonable so far but that's where I draw the line."
Hector's fingers pressed together at the bridge of his nose and he inhaled a long, deep breath. "Jasper is qualified because that is the job I have given him; Alex and Gregory have access to these rooms because they will be working closely with you and, in case you have forgotten, you cannot open the portal yourself. The way this castle was originally designed was to keep those who dwell within its walls in their own space. More like a prison than a home in every sense of the word; the Underworld as a whole is not unlike a prison. I have explicit say in who goes where, permission changes according to my whims but not to this space." An image formed in my head of a giant stone ant farm, with halls that led nowhere and endless tunnels connecting all the levels of the community. "Does it comfort you at all to know that there are only four hands imprinted with the permission to travel through that mirror?"
I said nothing in favor of mulling it over; at last I finally knew how the portal mirror worked. Hector took my silence as acquiescence and raised a crooked arm towards me, an invitation. I didn't accept the offer of his arm. Because he seemed in a hurry and I was full of spite, I made no move at all.
"Autumn, you are the most tenacious Fury I've ever metâand they have stubbornness in their blood. You can't honestly tell me that, for all your want of explanations, this doesn't sound like the answer to your prayers.
"Believe me, I need you as much as you feel you need to go home. Though you wish to villainize me, I am not the enemy here." He sounded tired, the kind of exhaustion that comes from days and days of sleeplessness. As if being here was a task too demanding of his energy.
Yesterday he had been so jovial, so full of life. He certainly had enough energy to kidnap me and lead me on a fieldtrip around the Underworld.
"Do you want answers or not?" I nodded my head in acquiescence. His next words weren't quite a request, but not quite a command. "Then come with me."
Tired of waiting for me, Hector made his way to the mirror, pressed his palm to the glass, and initiated the portal. A shimmer ran across the surface of the mirror and I knew it was now or never.
I practically ran to his side; I wasn't going to be left behind again. Hector took my hand in his, seriously tempting me to remark on how juvenile it felt to hold hands. Something in me held my sarcastic comments in my throat. I was beginning to really like that instinct.
Even despite the apparent fatigue, the man beside me looked like a god. He was handsome, a fact I didn't want to readily admit, but he had never been so imperial in my presence. He had come off as young and full of exuberance. He tried to impress someoneâprobably meâevery time he spoke. But in that moment before the portal, serious and fierce and rigid, carefully calculating every move with wisdom that came from experience, he felt regal.
So I grasped his hand with mine and we stepped forward together.