by Jenny Trout
The sun shone down from a blue sky, and though cheerful white clouds drifted above, they never cast a cold shadow upon the ground. The grass beneath Juliet’s feet was the greenest she’d ever laid eyes upon, and it lay in a long, rectangular field surrounded on all sides by a stately colonnade. Souls draped in softly colored fabrics moved from the shade of the columns to a large central fountain. The water sparkled pure gold, and just the sight of it made Juliet’s mouth water.
“I’m so thirsty,” she murmured, shaking free of Romeo’s grip on her hand. A few of the pastel-clad souls looked up, their faces serene and radiant, the way Juliet imagined angels must look.
“Hail friend, you are most welcome here,” one of them, a woman with golden hair in ringlets piled atop her head, said as Juliet approached the fountain.
“What is this place?” Hamlet was behind Juliet, and his voice startled her. She had forgotten all about his presence. Everything felt so right in this place, not at all like the bleak emptiness of Sheol.
In fact, it felt so right to Juliet that Romeo and Hamlet seemed…wrong. She wanted them to leave, so she could experience this place on her own, as a soul in communion with the others. The glittering fountain beckoned. A few of the people lounging on the grass or strolling the colonnade held crystal goblets, and they sipped the golden liquid from them.
If the beautiful blond woman was disturbed by the presence of the two living men in her realm, she did not show it. She smiled kindly at Hamlet and told him, “You have come to Elysia, traveler. Rest your weary heart here and be healed.”
“Elysia?” Hamlet sounded as though he didn’t believe the woman. “The plane reserved for mortal relations of the gods?”
If Juliet had a corporeal face, it would have flamed with embarrassment. To think that he would question someone who spoke with such authority, a denizen of this holy place, it was… well, it was arrogant and absurd. Hamlet may have been a prince in Midgard, but here, in the Afterjord, he was no better than anyone else.
“Becalm yourself,” the golden-haired woman urged Juliet with a knowing smile. “The secrets revealed to you in death have yet to enlighten him. I can tell you’re one of us.”
“Mm?” Hamlet chewed his thumbnail. “Is that what you tell everyone here? Drink the magic water, we know you’re one of us?”
“Excuse us,” Juliet begged the woman. With another panicked apology, Juliet grabbed Hamlet’s sleeve and pulled him aside.
“What are you doing?” he asked, sounding beyond shocked. “Unhand me at once!”
“You…unhand yourself!” Juliet fumed. It was a particularly cruel aspect of her personality that, should she ever find herself angry enough to raise her voice, what came out was usually nonsense. She forced herself to stay calm. Not that anyone should be able to have a flare of temper in this beautiful place. “You’re being rude! Would you rather have found ourselves among those horrible hollow souls again? Another berserker? Isn’t this the much better alternative?”
“Do you really think there’s nothing dangerous about a person you’ve only just met being exceedingly nice to you?” Hamlet arched one blond brow.
“No!” Juliet gestured toward Romeo, who had walked round to the other side of the huge fountain. A ring of beautiful, toga-draped girls had him surrounded, and their girlish titters were like the tinkling of bells. Juliet’s mouth compressed in a tight line. “It was how I met him. I trusted him from the very start.”
“You trusted him?” Hamlet grinned at her. “And now he’s over there, with them…You don’t feel the slightest bit of jealousy?”
“None at all,” she declared. She would not let the haughty prince ruin this lovely place for her. “In fact, here.”
She took out her dagger and, reaching up, very carefully cut one ringlet from her mussed tumble of fluffy black curls.
“Keep this safe, your highness,” Juliet instructed, holding the lock of hair out to him between her thumb and forefinger. “In case we become separated, or you can’t get me back to Midgard, give this to him. As a token of my ever undying love.”
“Can we…” Hamlet took the hair and tucked it into a pouch hanging from his belt. “I mean, we can’t really call it ‘undying,’ can we? You both died. A bit.”
“He didn’t die.” She couldn’t help another glance at Romeo, though now he was fairly invisible for the girls crowding around him. He hadn’t died, and he seemed to be having a remarkably good time flirting with the girls beside the fountain. He laughed and smiled, looking for all the world like the Romeo she had fallen in love with, instead of the broken creature who’d sprung her from Sheol.
He looked so different. That was what still took her breath away. Escaping death had hardened something in his soul, and losing her had made him desperate. What kind of creature would he become if he lost her again?
How long had he waited to come for her, after he’d recovered? It couldn’t have been an easy thing, to have found someone—a prince, no less—who could accompany him into the Afterjord. Had he waited for her the entire time? Or had there been others like the girls who surrounded him now? Pretty girls, who were not dead, who were pleasingly alive and who did not trouble him with the concerns of ghosts and supernatural woes?
Juliet’s heart was so preoccupied with her sadness that she forgot for a moment why she’d scolded Hamlet. She sighed in resignation. “Please, just…be more polite. For my sake. I may have to stay here once you and he are finished traipsing about the place. I would rather be welcome here than eaten by something horrible elsewhere.”
At least the prince looked properly chastened. She left him to return to Romeo. It seemed a bit silly to stake her claim when he had already proven his love by coming to the Afterjord to find her, but the women surrounding him touched his shoulder, his ear, stroked his cheek and played their fingers over his shorn head. That was not an insult Juliet would bear. Dead or not, she was still a Capulet. She still had honor.
But as she moved toward him, the woman with the golden hair glided smoothly into her path. “Is something troubling you, Juliet?”
“How did you know my name?” she asked with an uncertain smile.
“I know many things. I know that your heart is uneasy.” The woman frowned as though she cared deeply for the troubles of the stranger before her. “Is he the one who has caused you pain?”
“I’m not in pain. I’m just…” Juliet paused to collect her thoughts. It had become more difficult to think, it seemed, ever since they had passed into this place. “I don’t like the way they’re behaving toward him. He is my husband, even though one of us is dead.”
“The union of two mortal hearts isn’t always as permanent as it may seem,” the woman observed sadly. “But do not blame him. It isn’t his fault. They’re merely responding to the newness of him. Come, drink with me. It will cool your temper.”
The woman took Juliet by the arm and steered her toward the fountain. Juliet threw a look over her shoulder at Hamlet, who watched, but did not follow. Instead, he walked along the colonnade, his gaze leaving Juliet for only a moment now and then. He didn’t want to be seen spying, Juliet realized.
The woman sat on the marble lip of the fountain. With a flick of her wrist, a crystal goblet materialized from the air, and she scooped the golden liquid into it. “Here. This will soothe you. Drink up.”
Juliet took the cup, but she did not drink. She’d had quite enough of drinking magic potions. “What is this?”
For the blink of an eye, the woman appeared annoyed, but then the expression was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “Ambrosia. The nectar of the gods. You will drink it and feel eternal peace.”
“Now, take this vial, being then in bed, and this distilled liquor drink thou off…”
Friar Laurence’s voice haunted her so keenly that her fingers tightened around the goblet, as though that fearful phial were still in her hand. The woman was still gazing up at her expectantly.
“I’m not really thirsty,” Julie
t said with a smile that likely looked as forced as it felt.
“Oh, but you are,” the woman cooed, refusing to accept the goblet Juliet held out to her. “You need rest after your long journey. I can see your soul, Juliet. It is heavy with sorrow. Just a taste, and it could all be over.”
“What do you mean?” Juliet viewed the contents of the glass as poison now, for such ambiguous wording must certainly hide nefarious intent. “It could be over? I’ll drink this and I’ll forget Romeo?”
“You want to stay here, among us, don’t you?” The woman asked kindly. When she reached out and put a hand on Juliet’s arm, Juliet felt nothing. There was no substance to this soul.
Juliet could not remember what it felt to be fully alive, but she remembered the chill of fear. Still, she nodded and whispered, “Of course I do.”
“Then drink it.” The smile frozen on the woman’s face was chilling.
Juliet lifted the cup to her lips, then tilted it slowly. Just as the liquid should have touched her tongue, she dashed the goblet on the side of the fountain, scattering shards of crystal.
The souls in the field all gasped and turned as one at the sound of the shattering cup.
At once, Hamlet was at Juliet’s side, gripping her arm and tugging her toward the arches of the colonnade. “We should leave. We should leave now.”
“Where’s Romeo?” Panic rose in Juliet’s chest. If she’d needed to breath, she wouldn’t have been able to.
The kindly souls were drifting toward them both, their unkind intentions plain. Their beautiful features exaggerated, slender brows becoming pointed horns, straight white teeth growing sharp behind smiles that resembled hungry leers.
“Have you ever read the classics, Juliet?” Hamlet asked, never taking his gaze away from the slowly advancing souls. “Anything Greek?”
She couldn’t read, but she didn’t need to tell him that. His question proved rhetorical as he continued. “There are creatures, sirens, who draw the unwitting sailors their deaths on the rocks. They look very beautiful. And their song drives mortals mad with lust.”
Beneath the blond woman’s toga, her dainty feet had become scaly tendrils that whipped the grass as they propelled her forward.
“You resisted this one,” Hamlet went on, still grasping her wrist and pulling her back with him. “Because you aren’t mortal anymore.”
“Romeo!” Juliet shouted, scanning the place that had seemed like an oasis, but was now a horror. He was nowhere to be found.
“We can’t stay here,” Hamlet told her, grasping her hand and forcing it to clasp around his wrist. “Whatever they say, whatever they do, don’t let me go with them!”
One by one, the creatures opened their mouths. First one, then another, began to sing, a mournful, wordless cry, beautiful and sad and strange all at once.
Just as Hamlet had warned, he became affected by the song, swaying on his feet. Juliet tightened her hold and pulled him between two columns. She didn’t know where she was going, but away from the sirens would serve.
“What are you doing?” Hamlet shouted. “Let me go!”
“We need to find Romeo!” she insisted, picking up speed as they rushed down the colonnade. The sirens pursued, drifting behind them leisurely, their reptilian tails lashing the stone.
At the end of the colonnade, a beautiful countryside awaited them. Could the sirens pursue them there? How long could she force Hamlet to hold out against them?
Whatever they called it, the Afterjord was certainly hell. For no paradise could ever be so cruel and frightening.
They reached the end of the colonnade. Long grass swayed on the hillside leading down to a grove of olive trees. With one last look over her shoulder, Juliet pushed the prince down, watched him tumble head over heels down the slope.
“Romeo!” she called desperately, but he did not come, and the sirens drew ever closer.
They had already taken him, she realized, her stomach knotting in sickness and despair. She could not have lost him, not again. The same desperate feeling that had come over her when she’d heard of his banishment from Verona’s walls coursed through her soul now. She loved him, perhaps more than she had realized when her reckless affection had led to reckless actions and sealed her fate for all eternity.
She had made a choice not to leave Romeo that night, in that tomb, but she’d unwittingly left him behind. Now she had to choose to leave him behind, or risk being separated from him forever.
He had come into the Afterjord to find her. She could choose to be brave for him.
With a last, fleeting glance about her, she jumped.
…
One moment, Romeo had been standing beneath a clear blue sky, surrounded by beautiful women who’d seemed keenly interested in him, despite his numerous protestations. Then came a shattering echo, and the sky turned black. Purple lighting streaked the boiling gray clouds.
“Juliet!” he called, but when he looked past the women, he saw the rest of the courtyard was empty, the stone columns crumbling.
“Where is she?” he demanded of the women, whose fingers still tugged at his doublet and raked over his hair. Their touches were not so gentle and cloying now, but possessive and painful; their fingers seemed bony and sharp when they had not only a moment ago.
Their faces, too, had taken on a pinched severity, as though they were starving. He pushed one of them, then another, but still they came at him, slashing now with their claws, barring their teeth and hissing.
He drew his sword, and that forced them back. “Where is Juliet?”
“Gone from you, mortal man,” a lady in pink spat contemptuously. “Are you fool enough to reject us?”
“I would be a fool not to.” A ghostly white hand, covered in scales, reached out for him, and he lopped it off without hesitation. The woman—the creature—it had belonged to recoiled in agony, shrieking in some foul language. The hand itself rose up on its fingers and skittered away, a bleeding, five-legged beast.
“What are you?” he demanded, bringing the point of his sword to the pink lady’s chest. The others fell back at that, and he was emboldened. “If any of you touches me, I’ll kill her.”
She must have been the leader, then, for the rest of them slunk back a step or two. Looking closer now, Romeo saw that beneath their togas, their bodies were painfully thin, their skin a mass of serpentine scales. In place of legs, snake-like tails pushed them along the dusty dry ground.
The grass, the sky, the peace, had all been an illusion. They’d been tricked again.
The pink lady raised her head, and a long, forked black tongue flitted from her mouth as she spoke. “They teach nothing to young men of adventure these days. You were bound to encounter us at sea. Salt water brine seasons your kind so nicely…”
“Shut up!” Every instinct in him recoiled from these disgusting creatures, and he knew he should run. But he couldn’t run, not without Juliet. “Where is Juliet? What have you done with her?”
“The same we’ll do to you, dear one,” the woman in pink promised. Her eyes glowed golden, black slits for the pupils. “Sisters, you may feast!”
The snake women fell on him, but Romeo had never been in a fair fight in his life. He kicked one away, shoved another as he speared a third with his blade. The metal slashed up and up before he could free it from the demon’s body, green blood spraying him.
He could fight, but not forever, and there were so many of them. With his sword, he cleared a path, severed arms, hands, heads falling as he charged toward the broken colonnade and the hard-packed clay slope beyond it. When he reached the edge, he had but a heartbeat to make his decision. He sheathed his sword quickly and jumped, rolling down, his body beaten by the hard ground.
Though his head swam, he bolted to his feet, ready to dispatch any of the creatures who had followed him. But they were gone, the hillside, too. Romeo found himself in a strange, barren wasteland.
He was alone.
Of course he was alone. He deserved
to be. He’d forgotten about Juliet the moment a few pretty girls had surrounded him. Surely that had been a trick of the Afterjord, but why had he not resisted harder? Why had he accepted their attentions? Had his temporary jealousy of Hamlet left him witless?
Because of his foolishness, Juliet and Hamlet were both gone. Romeo had no one to blame but himself.
Chapter Twelve
Above Romeo’s head, dead olive trees reached their tangled branches to the black sky. Thunder rolled, purple lightning flashed.
His chest ached; his mouth was dry. He dropped to his knees, panting, dizzy from his fall. He wished he had taken the cup the sirens had offered him; he might not have been so thirsty now.
Was Juliet still trapped with them? He forced himself to his feet once more. He looked toward the place where the ruin had been, but nothing remained. Nothing but barren, seemingly endless dusty gray spread toward the black horizon. The scent of olives was gone from the air, replaced by brimstone and ash, and the strange, airy smell of lightning.
Juliet was gone. Hamlet was gone. Separated in the undefined, ever-changing Afterjord, Romeo despaired of ever finding them again. They were lost, or he was lost, and now there seemed nothing left to him but to walk.
He set off from the trees and had gone but a few steps when he heard his name, faintly, from the grove behind him. He turned, a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“Romeo…” it came again, a voice maddeningly familiar. Was it Hamlet? Romeo supposed it could have been, but everything they’d encountered in this nightmare world had been some trap or another.
“Hamlet?” He called out, taking a cautious step toward the trees. “Juliet, are you in there?”
The branches seemed darker than they had been before, like menacing black thorns hungry to catch his clothes, his hair, his flesh. He drew his sword and hacked at one, lamenting the damage it would certainly do his blade. But the moment it made contact, the branch disintegrated into ashes and embers. They were burnt, every last tree, standing frozen in death.
