Dreamless

by Josephine Angelini

  “All of this is really, really wrong,” Ariadne said compassionately, but almost begging Helen. “I’m so sorry for you both, but you have to stop this. Incest, even if it is unintentional incest where the two Scions don’t know they’re related, is another theme that gets repeated again and again. It always ends in the worst possible way. You know that, right?”

  “Yes. I read Oedipus Rex—I know how this story ends—but what are my options? Do you have any ancient home remedies that will make me fall out of love with him?” Helen asked, being only partly sarcastic.

  “Stay away from each other!” Ariadne snapped.

  “You were right there when he lost his mind and told me I wasn’t even allowed to look at him,” Helen shouted back. “And that lasted for what? Nine days? We can’t stay away from each other. Circumstances always bring us back together, no matter what we do to each other.”

  A big bubble of desperation was rising and swelling in Helen’s chest, and Ariadne’s pitying look was enough to make it burst. She stood up and started pacing. “I’ve literally gone to hell and back looking for a place to dump these feelings that I have for him, but I haven’t found a hole wide enough or deep enough. So, please, tell me you have an idea, because I’m out of theories, and if what Cassandra says is true, I’m out of time, too.”

  Helen felt a pop behind her eyes and raised a hand to cover the gush of warm blood soaking her lips. Ariadne sat in stunned stillness on the edge of her bed while Helen ran to the window, wrenched it open, and jumped out.

  Helen accelerated straight up. She wanted to see the thin blue line of air around the earth as it faded into black sky one more time. She wanted it fresh in her mind when she laid her head down that night. She was pretty certain that if she didn’t have some sort of miraculous epiphany, she would never pick her head up again.

  Cleaning the freezing blood off her face as best she could with the edge of her shirt, Helen stared at the slowly spinning earth. It was nightfall on her side of the planet, but she could still make out the gossamer layer of atmosphere. It was just a fragile sliver of nearly nothing that kept life on one side and frozen oblivion on the other. Helen marveled that something that looked so delicate could be so powerful. Another gift from Lucas, she thought, smiling at the humbling sight.

  Helen shut her eyes and let herself float. She was up high, higher than she had ever gone before, and the tug of the earth was so slight that for a moment she wondered if she could cut the final thread of gravity that tied her to the world and drift all the way to the moon.

  A steely hand clamped onto the back of her jacket, yanking her down and nearly tearing her clothes off. Helen twisted around as she tumbled back to earth, and saw Lucas’s tortured face as he pulled her against him.

  “What are you doing?” he gasped into her ear, clamping her tight to his panting chest as he rapidly sank them both back down. His throat was so pinched with emotion his voice broke repeatedly as he tried to talk. “Were you trying to drift off into space? You know that would kill you, right?”

  “I know, Lucas. I . . . it feels good to just let go.” She realized that she had said his name aloud for the first time in ages. It was such a relief to finally have his name in her mouth again that she laughed. “I like to do it sometimes. Haven’t you ever?”

  “Yeah. I have,” he admitted, still clutching at her and digging his face deeper and deeper into her neck as he floated them down from the cold night sky. He whispered in her ear. “But your eyes were closed. I thought you had blacked out.”

  “I’m sorry. I thought I was alone,” she whispered back.

  She knew she should ask, but she honestly didn’t care how Lucas got there. She held on to him tighter and tighter, as if she were trying to push him inside her chest and wrap her skin around him.

  This was Lucas, and she wanted to hold on to him, hold on to the person he was in this moment, before he had a chance to turn into the angry stranger again. He sighed deeply and said her name before pulling back from her hug and searching for Helen’s widow’s walk.

  “Where’s Jerry?” he asked as they hovered over her house. The Pig, Jerry’s ancient Jeep Wrangler, was conspicuously absent from the driveway and none of the interior lights were on.

  “Probably still working,” Helen said, never taking her eyes off him. “Will you come in? Or is this about to get ugly again?”

  “I promised you, no more fighting. It didn’t work, anyway,” Lucas said, and tugged Helen down to land with her on her widow’s walk.

  “You did do it on purpose, didn’t you?” For a moment they stood there staring at each other through the heavy silence. “Did your father have anything to do with it?”

  “It was my choice,” he said heavily.

  She waited for him to explain himself, but he didn’t. He didn’t try to make any excuses or push the blame off onto someone else. Instead, Lucas left it up to Helen to decide what was going to happen between them next. She punched his chest in frustration, not as hard as she could, but hard enough to make him feel something. He didn’t try to stop her.

  “How could you do that to me!” she cried, just short of howling.

  “Helen.” He caught her tight fists and pressed them to the place on his chest that she had hit. “What else could I do? We were together all the time again. Sitting together, telling each other our deepest secrets, and it was confusing you. You have more important things to think about than me.”

  “Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” she asked in a strangled voice, wanting to hit him again, but finding that her hands relaxed of their own accord and smoothed over him instead.

  “Yes.” He spoke so tenderly Helen knew that he was just as hurt by their separation as she was. “And the consequences will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

  Her brow wrinkled with worry. She knew that he wasn’t exaggerating—Lucas had changed. His face was so pale it reflected the moonlight, and his eyes were a dark blue that bordered on black. It was like looking at the midnight twin of her sunshine Lucas. He was still beautiful, but so sad it was painful for her to look at him.

  After everything he’d put her through, Helen knew she should want to punish him, but she didn’t. Somewhere along the way she had laced her arms around his neck and he had started running his hands up and down her back, and she wasn’t the least bit angry anymore.

  Staring into his eyes, she could see an odd gloom creeping around in there, trying to snuff out the glow she’d always found inside of him. But before she could figure out how to ask him what he meant by “consequences,” Lucas changed the subject and pulled away from her.

  “I had a long exchange with Orion today,” he said, opening the door on the widow’s walk that went downstairs into the house and holding it open for Helen. “He had a feeling that you weren’t telling us everything about what was going on in the Underworld. He asked me to help. He cares about you very much.”

  “I know that.” Helen led him into the house and down to her cold bedroom. “But he’s wrong. I’m not keeping anything from anyone. It’s just that I figured there’s no help for me, so why go into the details? I’m not dreaming, Lucas. How does Orion think you or anyone else can fix that?”

  Lucas slumped down on the edge of Helen’s bed, shrugged off his jacket, and kicked off his shoes while he thought. He was so comfortable in her room, it was like he belonged there. Helen’s every instinct screamed that Lucas did belong in her bedroom, despite the fact that they both knew he shouldn’t be there.

  “I descended into the Underworld the other night. At first, it was to see if I could help you in any way—without interfering, of course. And then after a few hours it was just to watch the two of you together. For a lot of reasons,” Lucas finally admitted, laying all his cards on the table. “Anyway, I got sloppy. Orion saw me there and worked out how I did it. He got in touch with me today to tell me why you were dying, and together we realized that I might have the one thing you need to get well again. So I guess
I did find a way to help you after all.” He swung his legs up onto her bed and settled back against the pillows.

  Helen stopped dead. She wanted to stare at him all night, lying in her bed like that, as perfect as could be, but she couldn’t get past what he’d just told her.

  “You descended into the Underworld? When? How?” she asked, trying not to squeak.

  “Saturday night. Ares saw me hiding in the boneyard and talked to me. I was the other ‘little godling.’ Remember? Then I distracted Cerberus when she chased you.”

  “The yodeler?” Helen asked in disbelief. “Wait, she’s a she?”

  “Yes,” he said through a chuckle. “I was the yodeler and Cerberus is a she-wolf. Now go wash up. I’ll be right here.”

  “But . . .”

  “Hurry,” he urged. “I had to wait until you were away from our family to bring you this, but I can’t stand to see you so sick for much longer.”

  Helen bolted into the bathroom and nearly washed her mouth out with soap and brushed her face with toothpaste, she was shaking so badly. She stripped and scrubbed and flossed and combed pretty much everything at the same time before jumping into clean pajamas and running back into her bedroom.

  He was still there, just like he’d promised, and Helen’s last nagging doubts evaporated. The unnatural separation was over, and they weren’t going to start yelling at each other or pushing each other away anymore.

  “Oh, good. I’m not hallucinating,” she said, only half kidding. “Or dreaming.”

  “But you need to dream,” he said softly across the room, staring at her. Helen shook her head.

  “This is better,” she said certainly. “Even if it kills me, staying awake and seeing you in my bed is better than any dream.”

  “You’re not supposed to say things like that,” he reminded her.

  He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them he smiled resolutely and lifted up the edge of the covers. Helen ran and dove into them, beside herself with happiness. She didn’t care about right or wrong anymore. She was dying, she reasoned; shouldn’t she at least die happy? Helen turned over onto her back and lifted her arms up to him invitingly, but he captured her face between his palms and made her settle back into the bed. He hovered over her, on top of the covers, pinning her safely beneath them.

  “This is an obol,” he said, holding up a small gold coin. “We Scions put them under the tongues of our dead loved ones before we burn their bodies on the pyre. The obol is the money the dead use to pay Chiron, the Ferryman, to leave the shadow lands, cross the River Styx, and enter the Underworld. But this obol is special, and very rare. It wasn’t made for the Ferryman. It’s for another dweller of the shadow lands.”

  Lucas held up the coin so Helen could see it clearly. On one side there were stars and on the other side there was a flower.

  “Is that a poppy?” Helen asked, trying to remember where she had seen this little gold coin before. A newspaper headline flashed into her thoughts. “You stole these from the Getty! Lucas, you broke into a museum!”

  “That’s part of the reason why I can’t let my family know I’m here, trying this. But you know my real reason . . . cousin,” Lucas said.

  He suddenly leaned down and brushed his lips across her cheek, but he didn’t kiss her. It was more like he was inhaling her. Feeling his warm lips so close to her skin made her shiver.

  Helen knew exactly why he had to hide this from his family. Theft was nothing compared to the immorality of what they were doing. Helen knew she should be disgusted that she was in bed with someone who was so closely related to her, but she couldn’t seem to convince her body that it shouldn’t want Lucas. Matt felt like her brother, Orion felt new and strange and so intense it was a little dangerous, but Lucas felt right. If other men were houses, Lucas was her home.

  How could she be so mixed up? She pushed against him gently to make him lean back and look at her. She still needed answers, and she couldn’t think with his face so close to hers.

  “Lucas, why did you steal them?”

  “This obol isn’t for Chiron. It was forged for Morpheus, the god of dreams. This will bring your whole body down to the land of dreams when you fall asleep.”

  “The land of dreams and the land of the dead are right next to each other,” Helen said, finally understanding why he did it. “You stole them to follow me down, didn’t you?”

  He nodded and ran his fingers across her face. “There’s an old legend, that says if you give Morpheus a poppy obol he may let you visit the land of dreams still in your body. I thought if I offered him a trade he might let me cross his lands and go all the way to the Underworld. I didn’t know if it would work, but what choice did I have? When I saw you Saturday morning in the hallway . . .”

  “You jumped out a window,” Helen reminded him. A smile crept across her face as she realized that she had just done pretty much the same thing to Ariadne.

  “To go steal these,” he said, smiling down at her. “I knew you were sick, I knew that pushing you away hadn’t helped, and I couldn’t sit back anymore and watch. I had to go down into the Underworld and find out why. Orion got a glimpse of me following the two of you and figured out on his own who I had to be. Then he mostly figured out how I was able to get into the Underworld.”

  “Mostly?” Helen asked.

  “He thought that since I’m a Son of Apollo, it had something to do with music. Which wasn’t a bad guess,” Lucas admitted begrudgingly.

  “You do have a beautiful voice,” Helen said. She wanted to keep Lucas talking, just to hear that voice and feel him stretched out next to her in her bed for as long as she could. “But why music?”

  “Orion originally thought I was doing what Orpheus did when he followed his dead wife into the Underworld to try and sing her back to life. But eventually, he put the stolen obols together with me, changed Orpheus to Morpheus, and guessed how I did it. Then he told me why you were so sick and asked me to try this with you,” Lucas said in such a way that led Helen to suspect a lot more had gone on in those text conversations than Lucas was letting on. “He’s a smart guy.”

  “What? Are you two best friends now?” Helen asked with raised eyebrows. Lucas swallowed painfully like she’d hurt him. Concerned, Helen reached out and ran her hand across his face, trying to wipe away the sadness that had appeared there so fast.

  “I respect him. Even if he won’t do what I ask.” His voice came out rough and thick. “It’s time for you to sleep.”

  “I’m not tired,” she said quickly, winning a little laugh from Lucas.

  “You’re exhausted! No more arguing,” he admonished sternly, although his playful look robbed the words of their sting. “Ask Morpheus to give you dreams again. He was very kind to me. I have no doubt he’ll help you if he can.”

  “Will you stay?” Helen asked. She stared at him, adoring him. “Please, stay with me?”

  “As long as I can stand it,” he promised, shivering. “I never get cold, but damn! It’s freezing in here.”

  “Tell me about it,” Helen said, rolling her eyes. “Come and keep me warm.” Lucas gave a small laugh and shook his head, like he didn’t know what to do with her.

  Staying on top of the covers, he settled in, allowing Helen to scoot down into a comfortable position. He folded her arms into an X across her chest and smoothed her hair back like he was laying her in her grave. He looked down on her intensely.

  “Open your mouth,” Lucas whispered.

  Helen could feel him shaking and watched a myriad emotions play across his face as he tucked the heavy gold wafer under her tongue. It was still warm with his body heat, slightly salty, and the weight of it in her mouth was remarkably comforting. Lucas reached out and gently closed her eyelids. Keeping his hand cupped over her eyes, Helen felt him brush his lips across her cheek as he leaned close to her ear.

  “Don’t let Morpheus seduce you. . . .”

  Starry skies and inky strips of silk surrounded Helen. She was in
side a tent that had no top, just undulating walls of dark, slippery sheets that seemed to breathe slowly as they caught and released a gentle and ever-changing breeze. Here and there between the swaths of material were austere Doric columns carved out of black pearl marble. Dim follow-me lights danced down the passageways, hovering in the night air. As one neared Helen, she saw that up close they looked like tiny candle flames glowing inside iridescent bubbles.

  The grass beneath her feet was covered by a field of poppies, their heads nodding drunkenly with the passing winds. Despite the darkness, Helen could feel the cool dewiness of the flowers and see the golden pollen that sparkled inside the bloodred blooms.

  About a dozen steps away from where she had emerged into this night-world, silk sheets and voluminous pillows of midnight blue, charcoal gray, and deepest purple spilled over the edges of the largest and most luxurious bed Helen had ever seen. The stars twinkled overhead and the piles of silk seemed to wink back at them like glittering oil slicks in the ghostly blue-moon light. A pair of ivory white arms, followed by a man’s naked chest, rose up from the dark mass of cradling material as he took a nice, long stretch.

  “I’ve been calling out to you, Beauty. I’m so glad you’re finally here.” His voice was familiar. “Beauty and Sleep. Sleeping Beauty. We were made for each other, you know. All the sayings say it. Now come and lie down with me.”

  His infectiously playful tone drew Helen to the edge of the bed. There was something about that voice that was so reassuring and sweet that Helen knew he had to be the gentlest soul in this or any other universe.

  She looked down into the gigantic bed, and saw Morpheus, the god of dreams. He had the whitest skin Helen had ever seen, shiny masses of wavy, black hair, and long slender limbs of delicately carved muscle. Stripped to the waist, he wore silk pajama pants of such a deep wine red that, like all the other colors of his sleeping palace, bordered on black, but never quite reached it.