by S. L. Stacy
“Thank you,” the eldest brother says to me as he coaxes the small, platinum-haired girl, the first one of them to speak when I got here, over the divide. They all look wide-eyed as they’re about to cross, but none of them call out in fear or objection. Maybe because they know they don’t have any other choice. “I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t gotten here. We’ve been here—well, I’m not sure exactly how long it’s been, but a very long time.”
“I didn’t really do anything,” I insist, feeling a blush creep up my neck and cheeks. “My sister and I heard your cries for help, and I tried to follow them. I was just about to give up when I stumbled on the way in. It was kind of an accident.” I shrug.
“Accident or not, I’m glad you found us.” His dark-haired twin sister is the last of their group to leave, and suddenly just the two of us remain. I keep expecting him to turn and go, but he continues to look at me like he’s trying to understand something. “You came to help us even though you don’t know us,” he finally says, a bewildered expression on his face.
“I…of course I did. That’s what people do.” Stepping closer to him, I take one of his pale, cold hands in mine and give it a squeeze. “They help each other.”
He glances down at our interlocked fingers, then back up at me, his eyes shiny with unshed tears. We stay like this for a few moments before he drops my hand. I feel a pang of disappointment that’s instantly erased when he reaches up to cradle the side of my face.
“You’re very brave,” he says. “Thank you.” His fingers fall from my cheek, but his eyes never leave mine. They seem to peer deep inside of me, penetrating to my very soul.
“You should go,” I finally tell him, forcing myself to look away. “The others are waiting for you. I need to get back, too. My sister’s probably wondering where I am.”
Nodding, the boy turns to go, coming to an abrupt stop as a voice extends across the chasm, filled with anger and worry. My grandmother’s voice.
Carly? Honey! Where are you? If you can hear me, answer me!
“That’s Nana,” I say in response to the wary look on his face. “It’s okay—she’s just looking for me. But you might want to hurry so she doesn’t see you.”
“She won’t see me. Superpowers, remember?” he adds with a playful smile. His unconcern doesn’t displace my sudden unease. I’m not sure why, but I don’t want my grandmother to catch him and the others leaving this place.
“Still. I think you should g—”
I lose the rest of what I was about to say as an arm, white, wrinkled, and dotted with age spots, shoots seemingly out of nowhere and clasps the front of my shirt. Yanking me forward, it drags me across the icy threshold. Before I know it, I’m back where the fringe of the forest meets my grandparents’ property line, staring into Nana’s shrewd blue eyes.
“Take her,” she says and quickly passes me to my grandfather, who gathers me into his bony but sturdy embrace.
“Say the ritual, Darlene,” he advises her, his grip on me tightening as I squirm and thrash, fighting to break free. “We have to close the tear before anyone else falls in. Or comes out.”
“Wait, Nana!” I plead as she raises her hand, which clasps an object I can’t quite make out except for the soft glow wrapped around it. “We can’t close anything yet. There’s a kid in there!”
“That’s not a kid,” Nana insists. “That’s a demon, and we have to make sure it won’t get out.”
“But…they didn’t look like…” I trail off, sagging in Pappy’s arms, his hold on me unyielding. I have a hard time believing that the boy and his siblings were demons, although he had admitted he had strange powers. I watch helplessly as my grandmother begins chanting furiously in a language I’ve never heard her speak before. It’s not English, or even the Croatian she and my grandfather speak to each other sometimes. As the words tumble effortlessly and ceaselessly from her mouth, the object in her hand glows hotter and brighter until the three of us and the woods beyond are captured in its eerie, scarlet light. My grandmother’s eyes stay fixed on the shimmering curtain, fierce determination etched on her face, her words never once wavering. The curtain itself starts to tremble, jerking from side to side like the rocky waves of an ocean during a storm. A circle of black nothingness appears at its center, expanding rapidly to eat away at the glittering mist until the last few specks flicker out.
All at once, Nana ends the chant abruptly and the reddish light fades out, throwing the woods into a heavy darkness. The object she used to mend the “tear,” as my grandfather had called it, lies dormant in her hand, an unremarkable lump of gray stone. The area around the tear has gone back to normal, the old oak tree standing tall and sturdy.
Pappy releases me, although he keeps a reassuring hand on my shoulder as we turn and start heading back toward the house. We walk in silence, no one uttering even a single word about what just happened. I can’t find the energy or focus to speak, anyway, too distracted by the thought of that boy still trapped in the castle, maybe never getting to see his brothers or sisters again. After a surreptitious glance at my grandparents, who are both looking straight ahead, absorbed in their own thoughts, I turn slowly to look over my shoulder, back at the woods now sleeping peacefully under the blanket of stars.
I suck in a breath. Standing against the line of trees like a row of thin, white ghosts, nine, solemn-faced figures are looking back at me. The eldest sister is on the far-left, her long hair glinting like black silk in the faint moonlight. Beside her, to my relief, is her twin brother. He raises a hand to give me a brief wave. There’s a painful finality to the gesture, but I’m just glad to know that they all made it out safely and are together again.
“Don’t look back,” my grandmother scolds me, and I turn back around, feeling guilty. “Never look back. We did what needed to be done. The demons have their own world. It’s our duty to keep them out of ours.” I nod, keeping my gaze to the ground as we walk through the garden and back up to the house.
“Where’s Di?” I ask once we’re inside. Nana immediately goes over to the stove and starts heating the saucepan with water back up, while my grandfather bids us goodnight and lumbers upstairs to bed. I can’t wait to tell Diane that the voices she had thought she heard were, in fact, real, and about the other world I’d seen.
“Diane’s upstairs,” Nana says, getting out a yellow mug and a tea bag. “Asleep.”
“Oh,” I sigh, sinking down into one of the kitchen chairs. “I just wanted to tell…” I stop myself from finishing the sentence, unsure if I should let on that I intend to tell Diane about everything that happened tonight.
“You can tell Diane all about it in the morning,” she assures me, finishing my train of thought. Moments later, she’s setting a steaming mug of tea down in front of me. “Drink your tea, and then it’s time for bed.”
I nod and bring the mug to my lips, breathing in its soothing aroma of honey and chamomile. As I sip on it, I notice an odd hint of bitterness, disguised mostly by the almost sickening sweetness of the honey. I drink it anyway, enjoying the feel of it slipping warmly down my throat, relaxing me. When I’m done, Nana and I go upstairs, and I collapse onto my bed, going right to sleep.
The next morning, I awaken to soft, yellow sunshine streaming through the gauzy white curtains, urging my eyelids to open. I sit up to find that Diane is already awake, brushing her long hair at the vanity.
“You’re finally up,” she says, putting the brush down and turning to face me. “It’s almost ten o’clock. You’d better get a move on. Nana and Pap want to take us to church.”
“Mmmhmm,” I mutter in response, getting reluctantly out of bed. “Church. Right.” I shuffle over to the closet and groggily rifle through it, looking for something nice to wear.
“I had a strange dream last night,” my sister continues, and I can once again hear the steady swipe of her brush through her hair. Diane’s words snap me out of my post-sleep haze. I turn around, a floral printed dress with a la
ce collar clutched in my hands.
“A dream? What sort of dream?” I ask her tentatively.
“I dreamed about these…voices. They were calling from the garden. It was just weird. Kind of scary.” She shivers.
I sit down on the edge of my bed, laying the dress out beside me. “I had kind of a weird dream, too.”
“Really?” Diane’s eyebrows lift. “What happened?”
“I don’t really remember it.” I pause, racking my brain for any lingering details of the dream. “I was in a room in a castle or something. It was dark and cold. And there was this boy there,” I remember suddenly, my heart giving a weird, excited leap. I absent-mindedly touch the side of my face. “He told me I was brave.”
My little sister wrinkles her nose. “That is weird.”
I barely hear her. “He was kind of…beautiful.”
This time, Diane sticks out her tongue, making a gagging noise. “Yuck. Boys are stupid. And have cooties.”
“Yeah,” I agree, my hand falling. “You’re right.” I stand back up, gathering the dress into my arms, and start to change. The dream would stay with me for the rest of the day, although the little I could remember from it was already starting to fade. That night, I would dream about holding hands with a dark-haired, green-eyed boy.
The next day, I wouldn’t remember anything about the dream at all.
Chapter 15
“It was me.”
Back in the present, my grandmother releases her ghostly grip on me as I open my eyes, meeting her sympathetic gaze.
“It was me,” I say again, staggering backwards, almost unable to bear the weight of this newly recovered memory. Conflicting emotions swirl inside of me, a volatile mixture building toward an explosive chemical reaction. As grateful as I am to be able to see my grandmother one last time, I resent her for giving me the tea that erased my memory of that night. The events themselves have left me speechless. Not only had Nana known about her status as a guardian, she knew what the rift was and how to repair it. As for everything else…
“I was the girl that let Dolos and his siblings out of Pandora.” I say it out loud, as though that will help me come to grips with it. All it does is make me feel even more perplexed and, for some reason, more miserable. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The timeline doesn’t add up.”
“Doesn’t it?” my grandmother counters. “Pandora is a realm outside of space and time as we know it. Our rules about what makes sense and what’s possible don’t apply there.”
I shake my head, unable to accept her explanation. Or any of it, for that matter. “He didn’t recognize me,” I insist. “When we met later, I mean. Dolos never mentioned we had met once before.” I guess he could have been lying, like he had about so many other things, but I don’t know what the point would have been.
“It’s possible he didn’t remember you,” the ghost points out. “You didn’t remember him.”
“Because you erased my memory,” I snap, instantly regretting the harsh response. Despite my anger, I don’t want the little time we probably have left together to be filled with animosity. I still love her, and we can’t change the past. “It was only eleven years ago.”
“For you.”
I’m not sure what she means by that, so I just nod, resolving to corner Dolos long enough later to ask him about it.
“I need you to know that I’m sorry, Carly.” She brings a hand to my face, her fingertips drawing tiny rivulets of ice as they stroke my cheek. “I shouldn’t have taken that memory from you. I thought I was protecting you from a dangerous world that you would never have to be a part of. But I was wrong. I’m glad you know the truth now, about what’s out there—and that you found the sisterhood. There are many dangers and hardships ahead, but you are strong and brave. Together, you and your sisters are more than up to the challenge of defending your world.”
“And tell Dolos about your first meeting,” she continues, beginning to drift backwards. As she pulls away from me, I realize that parts of her are beginning to fade, revealing more and more of the wall of jagged black rock behind her. “Remind him about your connection to each other, about the people who really care about him. Perhaps you can put an end to all of this without further heartache.”
I shrug, feeling doubtful. “Maybe. But, Nana, please don’t go yet,” I beg her, tears springing to my eyes. “It’s been so long, and I miss you so much. I can’t do this alone.”
“You’re doing just fine,” she says encouragingly. “Everything you need for the road ahead is up here.” Nana taps her temple with one, wispy finger just before it, too, disappears. Without warning, the rest of the apparition dissolves, small, gray flakes of it dispersing in the air like seeds from a dandelion.
“Wait—no!” I cry out, even though I know it’s already too late. My grandmother is gone.
Feeling suddenly lightheaded, I sink to the cold, damp ground, not even caring that I’m getting the back of my pants wet. I wipe both thumbs underneath my eyes, swiping away the tears collecting there, as I try to come to terms with losing my grandmother for the second time. And I still have so many questions for her.
My grandmother obviously knew about the Olympian world, but how much, exactly, did she know? Had she taken ambrosia to awaken that part of her DNA? I assume she would have, if she had known about ambrosia, but she had aged and died, so maybe she hadn’t. Then again, she was able to use what had to be an Olympian object to close the rift. How did she come across it? How did she know what to do?
Somehow, Nana’s energy was able to linger behind until she completed her unfinished business. Now that she had, where did she go?
So many questions are swirling through my head, I can’t focus on any particular one.
“I miss you,” I whimper, grief lying like a dead weight in my stomach. “And I need you. I don’t know what to do.” Frustration coursing through me, I get to my feet, hands balled into fists at my sides. I lean my head back and scream.
“Fuck!”
I cringe as the expletive slips out of me, ricocheting one hundred times over around the canyon. But once it’s out of my system, my eyes dry up, the tsunami of emotion subsiding. After a few more deep breaths, I feel like I’ve completely regained control of myself.
“It’s time to go,” I tell Apate, scooping her up off the ground. She’s still hanging her head, eyes watery, but I can’t wait around for her to feel better. We have what we came for, and now we need to get back and look for the final ingredient. She seems to understand this, unusually subdued as I set her gently back in the boat before getting rather clumsily in myself.
Once again, Persephone’s enchanted boat knows exactly where to go, retracing our path along the river. Before long, the gray marsh disappears, and everything is monotonous, black rock. When we reach the confluence where the three rivers meet, I know it won’t be long until we return to our starting point.
As I watch the bleak scenery pass, absently petting my feline companion, I notice the mysterious, gray light reflect off of something stuck in one of the black rocks offshore. Although I’m at a loss as to why, there’s something familiar about the gleam of dark metal and the glow that surrounds it, like a soft, red halo. Feeling suddenly curious, I look around frantically for a way to stop the boat, helpless as it continues to push forward.
“Wait,” I plead with it, banging my hand against the side. “Slow down. Stop. Stop!” Apate and I lurch forward as the boat comes to an abrupt stop, lingering, for a moment, in the middle of the river. Then, it obediently docks at the bank, and I climb quickly out, Apate making an annoyed sound in her throat as I yank her up along with me.
“I know,” I tell her. “I’m letting myself get distracted by shiny objects. I’ll only be a minute.” She growls like she doesn’t believe me, squirming in my grip. I let her down, and she keeps close to my heels as we pick our way carefully over the rocky shore, which starts to curve gradually upward. The object glints tauntingly at the top of the slope, and,
as we get closer, I realize it’s a large sword, its dark blade lodged firmly in the stone. The edges gleam scarlet, as though streaked with fresh blood, but it’s a light the sword itself seems to be radiating. A complicated pattern of interconnected loops and swirls is carved into the black handle. I remember now where I’ve seen this sword before—in the weaponry section of our ritual book.
“Godslayer,” I gasp, reaching out to touch it, feeling the cold grooves in the handle. I glance down at Apate, but she doesn’t seem as interested in it as I am, green eyes trained longingly on our boat rocking back and forth on the river below. Closing my eyes, I picture the entry in the book, trying to remember what it said about the legendary sword. The only weapon the blacksmith Hephaestus ever crafted that could kill an Olympian. Those who possessed it never lost a battle. The sword was lost sometime during the Cyclopes Wars and has not been seen since.
Until now. I open my eyes and let my hand fall from the hilt. “I’m sorry,” I tell Apate, and she looks up at the sound of my voice, “we should get going. I’m just wasting time here.” Even so, I make no move to go, staring at the sharp, brilliant blade, captivated by its gentle glow. I think about my own dagger, concealed safely underneath my sweater. When the time comes and I have to defend myself—or go on the offensive to stop Eric’s army—it should be enough. But with Godslayer, my sisters and I could truly protect ourselves. And, if the legend is true, we would have an ensured victory. We would be unstoppable.
And, since he made it, the sword technically belongs to Hephaestus, who just happens to be Farrah’s husband. So, really, I would be restoring it to its rightful owner.
Okay, now I’m just rationalizing.
I sigh. “I’m being stupid.” Apate gives me a look that tells me she couldn’t agree more. “I came for the asphodel. I just can’t take the sword. I’m not a thief.” I’m supposed to be the rational, cautious one. If Dionysus were here, he would probably just pull it out without another thought and run.
