I stumbled out on the other side of the portal. Hector stood with his back to me, his hand still clutching mine where he had been holding me as we passed through the portal. I pulled against his grasp, feeling dirt under my shoes, smelling fire and desperation. The world around me was bleak, dark, and stone. A cavern sprawled out before me, lit by an unseen force somewhere along the expansive rock ceiling suspended above us. Desolate weeping came from somewhere on my left. The sounds of running water almost drown out the crying, but I could hear it. My first instinct was to comfort her but Hector stopped me.
"Leave her be." He shook his head. "I brought you out here to show you what you'll be fighting for. It may not be as glamorous as the realm you're used to, but it is the most important of all the worlds. Without the Underworld, we would have nowhere for our dead. Your world is crowded enough as it is, don't you think?"
I didn't want to answer. "Let go of me."
Hector let go, beckoning me to follow him away from the crying sounds. I dug my heels in. "What's wrong with her?"
The Lord of the Underworld's lips pursed momentarily, deciding whether or not to indulge my inquiry. "She weeps for her dead children, slain by Artemis and Apollo. Niobe died of sadness, her body turned to stone by her unceasing tears for her children," he explained begrudgingly. "There is nothing you can do for her. Though it is noble that you would want to."
What was that in his voiceâannoyance, hedonism, exhaustion?
Satisfied that he had answered my question, Hector turned and continued in the opposite direction of the cries. There was nothing but open space so far as I could see.
And tunnels. Three tunnels hundreds of feet away from the crying woman, leading away from the direction Hector headed. Tunnels that might lead to a way home.
"It can always be worse," a voice sobbed in my ear. My skin prickled as I whirled on the speakerâa woman with wet eyes, her face so drawn she may never have smiled in her life. Her voice strained and low, she promised me: "Nothing safe ever comes out of that tunnel."
My breath caught in my chest. When she reached out her hand towards me, I scrambled after Hector; it was beginning to feel like all I would do for the rest of my life was follow him around. That wouldn't do; I jogged a few paces and placed myself in front of Hector so that instead he was the one following. He said nothing.
As an afterthought, I glanced back in the direction we had come, still walking towards who-knows-what in a never-ending cavern. Behind us stood an enormous castle. There were spiral towers and parapets, slits in the stonework for defensive mechanisms, and the portion that I could see loomed above me until I couldn't discern the castle from the stone of the sky. It seemed like the whole world was carved inside a rock. A boundless, hollow rock.
"You'll need to watch where you're going, Autumn. In your human skin, you won't be able to breathe out here for long and we have a ways to go."
Then why did we come out here? It's too soon to kill me.
I followed his suggestion and looked in the direction my feet were carrying me.
We walked on for too long; my hair stuck to the back of my neck with sweat and my lungs didn't seem to be working properly. Breathing was difficult. My legs had turned to concrete. The dirt beneath my shoes came alive and sucked at me, begging me to stay put. Each footstep heavier than the last, a wordless promise of peace whispered in my ear if only I would stop lifting my feet.
And what would be so bad about stopping here, just to rest, just for a second?
"I was under the impression that you would be strong than this. Didn't you eat the pomegranate?" Hector scooped me into his arms. It wasn't so bad. Nothing out there in his world was so bad; it all ran together, colors, feelings, sounds, they all became one entity and I was tired, too tired to care that the Lord of the Underworld was carrying me, or where we were going, or anything, really. Nothing mattered.
Being empty was better than being desperate or angry or frustrated or content or even happy. It was so much less work. Why hadn't anyone ever told me? I would have tried it years ago. It could have saved me so much trouble. In Hector's arms I stared at the ceiling, the stone impossibly far overhead. If it would crumble above me and crash down on top of us, crushing us to death, I wouldn't have cared.
Something wet hit my face and I started. I tried to sit up in Hector's arms, but I found that I wasn't in his arms anymore. While I had been dazed and confused, he had kneeled to the ground, so I was sitting in the dirt. He flicked something wet at me again, getting it into my mouth this time. It tasted of wet leaves and I could feel granules of something on my tongue. Not only was there dirt on my ass, but now it was in my mouth as well.
"Gross!" I spit and hacked and tried to get the taste of dirty water out of my mouth. "What was that for?"
Hector's words were full of remorse. "This is not a place for humans. With your mixed blood, I hoped you'd be strong enough to stand the atmosphere without falling prey to its despair so quickly. The pomegranate would have helped." At my look at disgust, or perhaps because I kept trying to spit river water from my mouth, he said not unkindly, "Relax, the water is mostly on your clothes, not in your mouth. You would need a significantly larger quantity to truly sufferâthe River Styx drowns you first mentally so that her victims virtually beg for her to take them physically. We will need to put some distance between you and the shore sooner rather than later." Hector stood. He looked to something behind me, staring as far as he could. I turned.
There was a river next to my spot on the ground. It was dark, with a grimy texture, which made it look about as appetizing as sludge, that gave the water a thick appearance. I decided I didn't want to know if this was the liquid Hector had thrown in my face. The water swirled in a slow-paced flow as if alive and taking its time wobbling along the riverbed.
Through the steam rising from the river I could see people on the opposite bank gathered, waiting. I remembered something about a boatman in Greek mythology, the character who ferried the souls of the dead into the afterlife. But if this wasn't the afterlife it was Purgatory, the desolate place between life and death.
Hector's voice cut through my observations. "Acting as a boundary between my world and yours, the River Styx is the most powerful body of water you'll ever encounter. It is in this river that your dead find peace. This water was what gave Achilles his invulnerability and if you allow yourself to be engulfed by it you will never leave. Do you hear the call of the River, Autumn? The sound becomes more lovely and enticing each day we get closer to returning the Nectar to its rightful place." There was a smile in his voice. He spoke with pride, as if the water before us was flowing with gold instead of gunk.
His features changed. The corners of his eyes tipped up, gold flashed in his irises. "Do you hear it? She sings to me such melodies..." he wasn't really talking to me.
I tried to see what Hector was seeing and to ignore what he was saying. As far as I could tell, the river continued forever. I rose to stand with him, listening to the water burble like a sweet backyard creek. The sound was deceiving, as the river was unending either way it flowed and the opposite shore was too far to swim. Not that I would want to swim it, if given the option.
If it smelled a little better, I could close my eyes and pretend that the noise was coming from my grandfather's kitchen, with his array of sauces and meats and scrumptious delights boiling away on the stove. My stomach gurgled at the memory, but the scene in front of me was not of my maternal patriarch, so full of love and warmth. Instead, my senses were assaulted by the foulness of the river. It just stretched on, forever, and I could take a nap in it, no matter the smell of wet, hot garbage. Once you got used to it, the scent wasn't so bad. The river could float me away into eternity, take me on to the next life where my grandfather waited, and I'd never have to go to war...
I stood on unstable legs. The ground beneath me looked hard but it was soft under my toes, like walking on Play-Doh, which made it difficult to balance. That on top of my shaky limbs had me wobbling at the edge of the river. My body plunged forward, dipping close to the sludge. But it was just fine reallyâI didn't want to run anymore.
"Snap out of it." Hades growled at me. All of a sudden, we were back inside, surrounded by scenic art and plush sofas. I don't remember going back to the castle. I do remember how his hands gripped my shoulders, tightly and with worry. He let go before either of us realized just how heavily I was leaning on him. I stumbled when he let go, falling into him.
Hector righted me with a gentleness I wouldn't have shown him given the way he growled at me. He looked at me, waiting. Jasper emerged from the kitchen to wait with us. They were watching me intently, like they were waiting for me to grow horns or start speaking in tongues. Unfortunately for them I hadn't changed so much; they were in for disappointment.
"You're the worst tour guide ever. What more proof of my humanity do you need? If I was a Fury I wouldn't have wanted to drown myself in your disgusting rive." I was losing myself and doing so gladly. He knew the effect the river would have on me and he dragged me out there anyway. He and Jasper were probably having a good laugh at my expense. It was that betrayal that cut the deepest.
Why should I feel betrayed by a man who kidnapped me in the first place? This is ridiculous. This shouldn't even be real! Breaths came in short spurts as I fought to control the onslaught of panic. I wanted to scream until I couldn't breathe and then scream some more. There was nothing about this whole night that made sense. I wanted to scream, I wanted to cry; my stomach constricted the way it did right before I introduced my fist to someone's face; part of me longed for the emptiness of the river.
The Underworld was messing with my mind, turning my emotions upside-down and making me crazy.
In my mind I was possessed by uncontrollable anger: I hoisted the nearest painting from the wall and snapped one of the edges off of the frame. It came apart with ease, both ends jagged and sharp. Armed with a long wooden stake, I rushed Hector. Jasper stood motionless, unable to react fast enough to the attack; once I'd swung the frame piece into Hector's jaw, I threw the weapon at Jasper. It sunk into his stomach with a slick, wet noise. In my mind, I was left standing over their bodies, one unconscious, the other already growing cold.
Outside of my mind, my own body froze, rigid on my feet. Hector, standing closest, reached out to me. The red and the blood were all still present in my mind; there was no escaping it. It filled me completely with so much rage I couldn't move, wouldn't move. I feared that if I did, I would explode into action, turning my vision into truth. I wanted so much to hurt them, to make them pay for the fear and the pain and frustration I had experience since I first landed in another dimension.
My anger wanted me to bleed something, hurt someone. It wanted to rip out throats and burn flesh from the bone.
But Hector touched me, ice against the fiery rage in my blood, and the anger simmered in the back of my head.
"Do you yet disbelieve your lineage? That was the Fury, trying to transform. With help, you'll be able to control it, but you must be willing to learn. It won't work if you don't trust in your blood."
Did I believe? I almost died in this place of myth and portals, magic and gods. I'd never had any imaginations about killing people before. Not once in eighteen years. And the images that had flashed through my head were graphic, frightening and bloody.
But they were also exhilarating.
The longer I stayed the more incredible this world became.
"I can't even kill spiders. What makes you think I'll be able to fight in a war against other gods?"
"Because of your blood. Have you heard nothing I've said? Pay close attention: you. Are. A Fury. You are the bringer of my salvation, and you and I will restore the Nectar to Olympus when we rise victorious above my brothers." He paused in his speech. "It is you who will lead my army to victory, Autumn. The Fates have foretold it."
Forget the Fates. Forget the promise of power and grandeur; forget the responsibility to fight for this infinite world that I wasn't quite ready to believe. None of that would matter in my normal, boring human life. When I next saw Sarah, I couldn't tell her that I met Hades. My mother would never accept my Fury-ness as an excuse for skipping school again. It would be back to business as usual at homeâif I went homeâno matter how much I changed here.
"What do I get out of this?" I said. My body shook from the aftereffects of the visions. I'd been shaking a lot lately.
"Name your price."
I reminded myself that there was only one thing I wanted. To my credit, I did not vocally hesitate. "You know what I want: I want to go home. I need to be in the same world as the people I love." When Mom hadn't seen me and couldn't contact me tomorrow, I knew she would panicâI couldn't be the reason for more grief in her life. I couldn't just disappear, not now; I was all she had left. "How many times to I have to tell you what I want?"
His grin returned. "That was the last time. You fight for me, you help me win this war, and I'll set you free. If I lose, you will remain here for as long as I please. Those are my terms."
Hector held out his hand. Like it was a business transaction and what was on the line was only money, nothing so important as my life. I hesitated but what did I have to bargain with? I had nothing with which to buy him off, nothing I could offer him except for myself. But of course, the moment he promised me freedom, my choice was already made. I had played right into his hands: he'd wanted to bargain from the very beginning. Mission accomplished, Hector. Well played. With my luck he was probably counting on my death in battleâI was just a means to an end.
I grasped his proffered hand with my own and his touch calmed my nerves. Until he smiled, of course. That hungry smile, the knowing smile a villain grew when he knew that he won. Hector knew he'd won me long before I consented to the deal.