In the comfort of the night, Eros kneeled on the shore and cupped the cool water in his hand. The liquid slipped back through his long fingers as he moved them slowly apart. He absentmindedly dipped his hand and strained the water several more times, deciding whether it would be safe to take a drink.
The Alcyonian Lake fed the rivers flowing into Hades, but did the waters flow back out? Sure, he’d heard rumors that once you drank from the lake, you’d be condemned to the Underworld, but Eros was immortal. The water couldn’t possibly hurt him. Besides, the late spring afternoon had been hot. Unseasonably hot.
Eros dipped his cupped hands into the pool. He pursed his lips together to sip, when a cracked voice called out from the misty darkness.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” Eros dropped the water back into the lake reflexively. “Of course, I’m not you, so drink up.” The voice cackled out a series of gruff laughs that gave way to a fit of coughing.
Eros squinted into the haze, wishing his eyesight were better at night. He wasn’t afraid, but his skin still crawled with an eerie prickle.
As Eros stared into the fog, he began to make out the skeletal figure of a ferryman coming closer. The ancient man’s skin stretched across his bones, unsupported by muscle or meat. His long nose protruded from his face like a hooked beak, while his eyes sunk into their sockets. A mess of grayish hair, caked with sweat and grime, clung to the sides of his bony scalp. With great effort, the man plunged his staff into the water ahead, sinking into the soft bottom of the lake, and lurching the ferry forward.
Eros had never met Charon before, but this had to be him. The ferryman of Hades, who moved souls from the shores of life into the depths of the Underworld. For a small fee of course. Nothing in life — or death — was free.
“Where’s your coin, boy?” Charon called out.
Boy? Had Charon just called him boy? Eros rose up to his full height and spread his wings behind him. The show of bravado only made Charon laugh again.
“You’d better take care who you mock, old man.”
“Or what? There’s nothing you can do to me. You gods need me.”
“Fool. The gods don’t need you.” Eros took a step closer, daring the old man not to back down. “I don’t need you.”
“Ha! If I didn’t ferry the dead down to Hades, your precious earth would be overrun with shades. What would become of your playground then? I’d like to see you try to woo a woman with all of her dead family standing around watching.”
Charon cackled again, and then his thin, pale lips curled into a smile. “Besides, boy, you do need something from me. Some information, perhaps?”
Eros glared at Charon. He kept his gaze icy while trying to assess whether he could ask about Hermes. Charon held his stare, refusing to look away.
“Go on, boy, ask me. Ask me what you want to know.”
“What will it cost me?”
“So you are clever. Never mind my fee this time. Your mother will be paying my toll soon enough.”
Eros lunged at the old ferryman. “How dare you threaten my mother’s life.”
Charon pulled away, faster than Eros had given him credit for, and Eros splashed into the lake, soaking the ends of his tunic.
“It’s no threat, boy. There’s no force on Earth or Olympus that could kill that woman. But I expect she’ll be sending someone my way soon enough, and that will be all the fee I require.”
“You collect gold, not souls,” Eros accused. He didn’t trust Charon or his promise to answer a question for free.
“I could build a staircase to Olympus with all the coins I’ve collected. What can they buy me? Can they buy me freedom from this unending toil? Can they buy me repose in a magnificent palace? Can they buy me the love of a beautiful woman?”
Eros suddenly saw the human frailty of Charon. A weakness he could exploit. Of course, like everyone else, Charon wanted love, didn’t he?
“Is it love you want? You needn’t wait for my mother. Just ask me.”
Charon broke out into his coughing laugh again, practically choking himself. His full weight bore down on the staff as he struggled to keep from falling over. Charon finally coughed out, “Love? Love is for fools, boy. I’ve just tired of seeing the shades of the old, decrepit and diseased. I want a face to light up the gloom. The face…”
The weight of Charon’s words crushed into Eros’s chest. “You will not have Psyche.”
“You can’t stop your mother, boy. She’ll send Psyche to the Underworld one way or another. You mark my words.”
“I’ll make you pay for those words,” Eros snarled from behind clenched teeth.
“Your mother already has paid for them,” Charon replied. “And so now I’ll answer your question. Hermes isn’t here. He hasn’t come this way yet. Of course, I do expect him in the next two, three, maybe even four days.”
Eros stared at Charon in steely silence, his fists clenched into tight balls at his side. He struggled to keep his breathing at an even pace while fighting the urge to tear Charon’s head off of it puny neck.
“I see you’ve grown tired of my visit,” Charon said. “Perhaps I better take my leave.”
With a few swift strokes of his staff, Charon dissolved into the mist.
Chapter 12 - Eros
Eros barely slept that night. He crawled up into the branches of a tree nearest the gates to Hades and wrapped his thick, white wings around himself. The spring night wasn’t cold, but an uncomfortable chill seeped into his bones.
Every noise broke his fragile slumber. He didn’t dare sleep through any sound for fear he’d miss catching Hermes before he handed the shade over to Charon and left again. But Hermes didn’t come — that night or the next. Eros’s time was ticking away and there was nothing he could do but wait.
He obsessively looked in on King Darion and his progress toward Delphi. If Eros was right, the king would reach Delphi in less than a day. The seas had been gentle and the winds swift. Of course they had. Aphrodite was out dancing on the waves. Sailors were always in luck when she played in the ocean. But even still, Darion made faster time than Eros predicted.
If he couldn’t get Hermes’s help with his plan in time, Darion would receive a true prophecy from the Oracle. When Eros agreed to make Psyche fall in love with a wretch, her fate had been written in the stars. And if the Oracle foretold that destiny, Eros would be powerless to change it.
He’d have to make her love another.
With mere hours before time would run out, Eros had worked himself into a frenzied state of panic. He felt his hold on reality slipping, thinking he heard sounds that were never made and saw visions that never existed. Which is why when Eros heard two men fighting in the distance, he questioned whether his ears were tricking him again. But the men moved closer and the sounds of their skirmish grew louder.
“You don’t know who you’re talking to. Get your hands off of me.”
“I don’t care who you were, you’re dead now. D-E-A-D; dead! The sooner you accept that you’re a shade now, the better.”
Eros could hear one of the men grunt and strain.
“Senator, let go of that tree. You’re going into Hades if I have to drag you all the way there myself.” Eros knew that had to be Hermes, arriving with the important shade at last.
Then Eros heard a light clang, like a coin being tossed against a rock, and then a plink as it plopped into the lake.
“Oh, now why’d you go and do that? You need that coin to give to Charon.”
The shade sounded exuberant. “Exactly! No coin, no ferry ride. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yes … you … are.” Hermes dragged the shade by his elbow toward the bank of the lake.
This is it, Eros thought. He’s here. Eros launched toward his friend, “Hermes! Hermes, I need a favor from you.”
Hermes shoved the shade at Eros. “Hold this senile old fool while I get his coin back.” Hermes plodded into the water, peering below the ripples for the coin.
“Just a minute,” Hermes murmured, still searching.
“I don’t have a minute,” Eros snapped. He looked over the water for a moment, then reached down and plucked out the coin. He slapped the coin into the shade’s hand. “You will hold on to your coin.”
“Thanks,” Hermes said. “This guy’s been nothing but trouble. I can’t convince him he’s dead. You wouldn’t believe what he pulled on the way here …”
“Hermes,” Eros cut in. “I’m sorry this guy’s been a problem, but I need your help. Now.”
Hermes studied his friend and wagged his thick eyebrows. “Have you played another trick on Zeus again? If you want me to hide your arrows from him until he calms down, I’m not sure even I can fly fast enough.”
“No, no. It’s not Zeus who’s after me. It’ll be my mother if I’m not careful, and I’d rather have a hundred Zeuses mad at me than one Aphrodite.”
“How’d you manage to cross your mother?”
“It’s sort of a long story. I’ll tell you while we take this guy to Charon.” As they walked, the shade in tow, Eros explained.
“I’m not even sure what happened really,” Eros said. “One minute I was standing there, about to shoot Psyche and the next minute … I just couldn’t do it.” He rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers. “Being near her was intoxicating or something.”
“Tell me this doesn’t end how I think it ends.” Hermes stopped walking and glared incredulously at his friend.
Eros looked down at his dusty sandals. “When I lowered my arrow, I nicked my knee.”
Hermes shrugged his shoulders and looked at Eros like he was an idiot. “What, did you miss the how-not-to-impale-yourself-with-your-own-arrow lesson? How on Earth did you shoot yourself?”
Eros huffed. “I just told you. She bewitched me or something.”
“You expect me to believe a mortal made you lose your hand-eye coordination? I think something else is going on here.” Hermes studied him. “Are you just trying to get back at Aphrodite for being a harpy your whole life? Because I don’t need to be on the wrong side of her either.”
Eros took a step back and his shoulders slumped. “Fine, you want the truth? Yes. Yes, a mortal made me love her.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “Psyche’s soul sang to me like a siren. Somehow I knew I needed to choose her and I did.”
Hermes turned and started walking again. “Then un-choose her. Just get your mommy to undo the magic. You don’t need me for that.”
“You don’t understand,” Eros called, rushing back to Hermes’s side. “I need her now. I don’t want this undone. I want her.”
Hermes stopped short. “Listen to me. Let it go. She’s just a girl.”
“No way,” Eros shook his head. “She’s more than that. She’s everything.”
“You’re serious?” Hermes asked, his arched eyebrow implying he was more than skeptical.
Eros nodded. Hermes only looked away, shaking his head.
“Please, Hermes, I need this.”
“Fine, what’d you want me to do?”
“I need your help with the last part of my plan. I was able to divert Psyche’s suitors by having them drink from the Spring of Abstinence before they could reach her palace, but —”
Hermes interrupted. “Psyche’s suitors? You gave chastity water to Psyche’s suitors?”
Eros’s brow wrinkled. “Yeah. So?”
“Those men made offerings and prayed to me to keep them safe on their journey to Sikyon. How am I supposed to help you now?”
“What’s your problem? I gave them a little water. They’ll never know the difference.”
Hermes shook his head. “Negative. You ruined the whole point of their trip.”
“Come on. Lighten up a little, buddy.”
“I’m serious, Eros. Travelers are some of my most devoted followers. If you betrayed them, I can’t help you.”
Eros buckled. He’d come so far; waited so long. For what? This couldn’t end like this. He had to have Psyche.
Dropping down to his knees, Eros grasped Hermes’s cloak and looked up at him. “Hermes, I am begging you. No, I’m praying to you, as a traveler who’s journeyed to the gates of the Underworld to find you. You can’t turn your back on me. I will be your most devoted servant. I’ll —”
“He’s asking so nicely, you really ought to help him,” the shade cut in. “I always used my position on the Senate to help people.”
Hermes shot him an icy look that said “shut up and mind your own business.”
Then he sighed loudly as his head fell back. “This is pitiful. Get up, you love-struck idiot.” Hermes wrenched his cloak free from Eros’s hands. “Besides, I don’t want a fool for a servant. Psyche can have you.”
Eros clambered back to his feet. “You’ll help me then?”
Hermes smiled. “I’m tempted not to just because I like seeing you squirm with love instead of it being the other way around.”
Eros’s mouth tightened into a line as his usually full lips pressed together. “I suppose I deserve that,” he said as he folded his arms across his chest.
Hermes sucked his teeth with a smack. “Oh, stop being such a girl. What is it you want?”
Eros pulled a folded piece of parchment from under his tunic and pressed it into Hermes’s hand. “I need you to carry this message to Apollo. But you can’t tell him it’s from me. He’d never agree to help me himself.”
Hermes snorted. “That’s the truth. I don’t think he’ll ever get over the time you used your arrows on him.”
“But he’ll help you. You’re his brother.”
“Half-brother,” Hermes corrected.
“You’re changing the subject. Are you going to help me or not?”
“I already told you I would,” Hermes said. “What exactly do you want me to tell my half-brother?”
Eros rolled his eyes. “Just give him the note. Tell him you had a vision of Psyche’s future and you want the Oracle to give Darion your prophecy.”
Hermes just blinked at Eros. Even the shade shifted uncomfortably.
“Come on,” Eros said. “It’s not much different from what Apollo would foretell himself. He’ll believe you had this vision.”
“So let me get this straight. You want me to tell my brother, Mr. Overlord of the Future, that I had a random prediction about some princess and he should let me use his precious Oracle to try my hand at the whole fortunetelling thing. Really?”
Eros gritted his teeth. “You’re not exactly selling it when you say it like that.”
Hermes clapped his hand to his forehead and closed his eyes. “I’m just giving you a reality check, man. There’s no way Apollo’s going to go for this.”
Eros turned his gaze away from Hermes for a moment and let his eyes glaze over as he used his vision to look in on King Darion. As quickly as he had looked away, Eros’s eyes snapped back to his friend.
“If you don’t hurry, we’ll never know whether Apollo will go for it or not. Darion’s ships have landed at Delphi.”
Shaking his head, Hermes eyed his friend. “You’re crazy. You know that, right?”
“Please, Hermes. Please.”
“Fine. I’m leaving,” Hermes said. “You’re in charge of the shade. Don’t leave here until he gets onto the ferry.”
Chapter 13 - Psyche
The waiting was excruciating. I wished my parents had let me sail along with my father to Delphi. I could’ve consulted Apollo’s Oracle myself. Why should I have to stay home when it was my future hanging in the balance? Besides, sailing the Gulf of Corinth and visiting Delphi would’ve been a much-needed diversion.
Anything was better than waiting.
My mind ran endlessly over different scenarios that might play out when Father returned. I knew there was a good chance he’d come home with bad news. He might learn I was destined never to have a husband as I’d feared.
Or the Oracle might just tell my father to start planning my funeral. Aphrodite was known to have torn men to shreds for lesser crimes than personal insults.
At this point, I wasn’t sure which would be worse.
To settle my swirling mind, I read everything I could about the Oracle. About the girls who became the oracle, trading their lives for a chance to know the divine.
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