“Owwwwww! What dark god is this ’oo ravishes me away from the light of the world? Ow, ’elp, ’elp, will nobody ’ear my distress? Father Jove, where art thou?”
“Quickly now,” Sir Francis whispered, and they hurried on through the darkness, around a corner, around another and another, deeper into the labyrinth, and Lewis heard water rushing somewhere ahead. They passed through another, smaller chamber, where there was a low stone altar; Lewis nearly fell over it, but Sir Francis caught him again and the girl took his other arm. Somehow they made it into the next passage and shortly came out into another chamber.
“The River Styx,” announced Sir Francis, with a wave of his caduceus. “Here Hermes of the winged heels can conduct no farther. Away! He flits! He flies, back to lofty Olympus!” Throwing out his arms and springing into air with quite a remarkable balletic grace for a man his age, even crossing his ankles before he came down, and landing so lightly that his wig scarcely moved on his head, he turned and ran back up the passageway.
Lewis stood staring after him. The girl tugged on his sleeve.
“We’re supposed to get in the boat,” she said.
Lewis turned around to look. They stood on the edge of a dark stream that rushed through the cavern. On the farther shore was the entrance to yet another black passage. Before them was moored a quaint little boat, beautifully if morbidly carved with skulls and crossed bones, painted in black and gold.
“Oh,” said Lewis. “Yes, of course! But where’s Charon?”
“’Oo?” said Persephone.
“The ferryman,” said Lewis, making punting motions.
“Oh. Nobody told me nothing about no ferrymen; I reckon you’re supposed to get us across,” said the girl.
“Right! Yes! In we go, then,” said Lewis, who was finding the red flashes subsiding somewhat, but in their place was an increasing urge to giggle. “My hand, madam! Yo-heave-ho and hoist the anchor!”
“’Ere, are you all right?” The girl squinted at him through her veil.
“Never better, fair Persephone!” Lewis cast off and seized up the pole. He propelled them across with such a mighty surge that—
“Bleeding Jesus, mister, look out! You’ll—”
The boat ran aground and Lewis toppled backward, falling with a tremendous splash into the dark water. He came up laughing hysterically as he dog-paddled toward the boat, with his wig bobbing eerily in his wake.
“Oh, God Apollo, I’ve drowned in the River Styx. Well, this is a first for me, but I wouldn’t be mister, you know; the technical term is mystes—”
Persephone stuck her torch in a rock crevice, grabbed his collar, and hauled him ashore. “You been drinking, ain’t you?” she said in exasperation.
“No, actually—it’s the drinking chocolate; it has an odd effect on our nervous systems, we cyb-, I mean, we … Owenses,” said Lewis through chattering teeth, for the water had been like ice.
“Ow, your shoes’ll be ruined and—give me the bleeding pole; we got to fish your wig out. Damn it, I ain’t wearing this veil another minute,” said Persephone, and tore it off.
Lewis caught his breath.
She was a very young girl, pale by torchlight, but with roses in her cheeks. Her hair was red. Her eyes, rather than the blue or green one might expect, were black as the stream from which she’d pulled him. His heart—not the cyborg mechanism that pumped his blood—contracted painfully.
“Mendoza?” he whispered.
“’Oo’s that? ’Ere, what’s wrong?” she demanded. “You ain’t going be sick, are you? You look like you seen a ghost.”
“I—you—you look like someone I knew,” said Lewis. “I must apologize—”
A throaty scream came echoing down the passage from the banqueting chamber.
“My child!” cried Madam Demeter, in tones she had clearly picked up from watching Mr. Garrick at Drury Lane. “Ooooh, my chiiiiild! She is quite rrrravished away! Ow, somebody ’elp me quick! Wherever could she be?”
“Bugger,” said Persephone. “We got to go on. Come on, get up! You need a ’and?”
“Please—” Lewis let her haul him to his feet. He stood swaying, wondering if she was a hallucination, as she stuck the torch in his nerveless hand, retrieved his sopping wig, and grabbed up the basket. She did not wait but started ahead of him through the dark doorway. Coming to himself, he ran squelching after her.
Only a few yards on they emerged into the last chamber; there was no way to exit but back the way they had come. It was a small room, very cold and damp indeed, and empty but for a squarish stone object in the middle of the floor. There were some carvings on the side; Lewis recognized it for a Roman sarcophagus. Persephone sat down on it and began to rummage through the basket.
“You want to get out of them wet clothes,” she advised. She held up one end of a length of white cloth. “This ain’t much, but at least it’s dry.”
He stared at it in incomprehension, trying to clear his wits. She sighed, set the basket down, and began to unbutton his waistcoat.
“Don’t tell me you ain’t drunk. Come on, old dear, we ain’t got all night,” she said. “’Ark at ’em going on!”
“I am Hecate, her what rules the night! I know where your daughter got to, Mistress Demeter!”
“Pray, speak thou!”
“Well, I hears this scream, see? And I says to all-seeing Helios, lord of the Sun, I says, ‘Whatever was that noise? Sounded like a virgin pure being carried off!’ And Helios says, he says, ‘Oh, that was fairest Persephone being ravished. It was that Lord Hades done it!’”
“’E never!”
“S’welp me God! She’s gone to the Otherworld to be Queen of the Dead!”
“My CHIIIIILD! Almighty Jove, is there no rrrrremedy!”
Lewis stood nervelessly, letting the little girl peel off his soaked garments, until she unfastened his trousers.
“I—perhaps I’d better do that,” he said, clutching at himself and backing away.
“Please yourself,” she said, and matter-of-factly began to strip down.
“Madam, be content!” a male voice came echoing down the passageway. “It is the will of All-Seeing Jove!”
“Whaaaaaat? What perfidy is this? It shall not be!”
“’Ow they do go on,” said Persephone. Lewis, hopping on one foot as he tried to get his breeches off, turned to answer her and nearly fell over, for she had skinned out of her garments with the speed of frequent practice and stood unconcernedly brushing out her hair. He stared. She didn’t seem to notice.
“ … why then, sir, ’Eaven shall learn a goddess may be wrathful, too! I shall with’old my gracious bounty from the woooorld! See if I don’t! The green corn shall wither in the field, and mortal men shall staaaarve!”
“They’re getting louder!” said Lewis. “Oh, dear, they’re not coming in here, are they?”
“Naow, just as far as the room with the h’altar,” said Persephone. “This is the sacred grotto. Nothing in ’ere but the sacred scroll.”
Lewis managed to get his breeches off. Clutching them to his lap, he shuffled crabwise to the basket, rummaging for something with which to clothe himself. He pulled out a voluminous length of gauze embroidered with flowers.
“That’s mine, ducky,” said Persephone, sliding past him to take it. Her bare breast grazed his arm. He started so violently he dropped the sodden bundle he’d been holding. Persephone looked down. Her eyes widened.
“ … wander through the barren world, mourning the ’ole time for my dearest daughter! Oooooh, the perfidy of Jove!”
“I’m sorry,” said Persephone. “This ain’t ’arf awkward. Look, if we was anyplace else, I’d do you proper, a nice-looking boy like you; only I can’t ’ere, on account of it’d be sacrilege.”
“It would?” said Lewis piteously.
“’Ere will I rest awhile amid this sheltering grove, and in the shape of somebody’s old wet nurse I will appear. But, soft! ’Oo approaches wretched Demeter? I pe
rceive they are the daughters of some king or other.”
“Why, who is this poor old thing as sits beside our washing well? Cheer up, good lady. You shall come home with us and nurse our young brother.”
“Didn’t ’is Lordship h’explain?” Persephone rolled her eyes. “I thought you’d done this afore.” She pulled the embroidered shift over her head, and yanked it down smartly to cover herself.
“Well, yes, but—it was a long time ago, and …” His distress seemed to aggravate the TOXIC RESPONSE ALERT. He squeezed his eyes tight shut, and made an effort to sober up.
“Nooooow I am alone with the mortal babe, I will reward the kindness done to me! So! So! ’Ey presto! Another pass through the flaaaaames, and he shall become immortal—”
“Ow my gawd, lady, you’ll burn up my baby!”
“Now look what you went and done, foolish mortal! The spell’s broke—”
“I can’t do you because I’m being the Queen of h’Avernus,” Persephone explained. “Which it would be h’adultery, see, on account of me being married to the Lord of the Dead and all. Do your breechclout up like a nice bloke, won’t you? I know it don’t seem fair, what with ’is Lordship and that lot getting to fornicate like mad. But it’s in aid of Mr. Whitehead, you know.”
“Oh,” said Lewis, blinking back tears as she fastened his loincloth in place for him and then draped a white scarf over her hair.
“Poor old thing’s dying,” said Persephone. “Ever such a nice gentleman, ’e is. I wonder why the nice ones always dies on you? But this way ’e won’t be scared, see—”
“—build a temple to meee, and so my divine wrath shall be appeeeeeeased! Nay, more! I shall grant eternal life to ’im as performs my sacred rites!”
“We thank thee, merciful goddess!” Now it became an exchange between the woman’s voice and the chorus of male voices:
“What ’ave you done?”
“We have feasted; we drank the kykeon!”
“Fasted,” Lewis corrected absently.
“What’ll you do next?”
“We’re taking something out!”
“What’ll you do with it?”
“We’re going to put it in something else!”
“Then come forward, mortals, and be’old the Sacred Flame! Die in the fire of my h’embrace, to live eternally!”
“Whu-huh-HEY!”
“I’m just as glad I ain’t got to watch this part,” remarked Persephone, settling down on the tomb lid. “Between you and me, Mrs. Digby ain’t so young as she was, and the thought of ’er on that h’altar with ’er knees up—it’s enough to curl your ’air, ain’t it?”
“I suppose so,” said Lewis, sitting down beside her.
Sounds of violent carnal merriment echoed down the passageway. Persephone twiddled her thumbs.
“So, er, ’ow’d you learn about the old gods and all that?” she asked.
Lewis stared into the darkness, through a hazy roil of red letters and memories.
“I was a foundling baby, left in a blanket by a statue of Apollo,” he said. “In Aquae Sulis.”
“Where’s that?”
“I mean, Bath. It’s in Bath. I was raised by a …” Lewis pondered how to explain a twenty-fourth-century corporation with the ability to time-travel and collect abandoned human children for the purpose of processing them into cyborg operatives. “By a wealthy scholar with no particular religious views. But I always rather liked the idea of the gods of Old Rome.”
“Fancy that,” said Persephone. “Mrs. Digby, she learned it off His Lordship. Ever such a comfort, for poor working girls, she says.”
“You shouldn’t be doing this,” said Lewis, taking her hand in his. “You should have a better life. If I helped you—if I set you up in business, or something—”
“That’s the liquor talking, dearie,” said Persephone, not unkindly. “Lord love us, you ain’t nothing but a clerk; you ain’t got any money. And it ain’t such a bad life; things is ’igh-class at Mrs. Digby’s, you know. Much rather do that than be somebody’s scullery maid.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lewis whispered.
“It’s all right; it’s what we’re born to, ain’t it?” she said. She inclined her head to listen to the tumult coming from the altar chamber. “I reckon it’s time for the seed, then.”
From her basket she produced a pomegranate, and, digging into the rind with her thumbs, prized it open. She picked out a seed and crunched it.
Lewis watched her hopelessly. She offered him the fruit.
“’Ave some?”
“Yes,” said Lewis. “Yes, for you. I will.” He took a handful of ruby seeds and ate, and the bittersweet juice ran down his chin. She reached up a corner of her veil and wiped it clean. They huddled together for warmth, there on the lid of the tomb.
“Go to it, Paul!”
“Bravo, Whitehead! That’s the spirit!”
“Huzzay!”
“That’s it, lovey; that’s the way, ooh! Lord, plenty of life in this one yet! That’s it. You just rest in my arms, my dear. There ain’t nothing to be afraid of. Think about them Elysium Fields … that’s my darling, that’s my sweet gentleman … .”
“Hup! Ho! Ha! Whitehead’s soul is to Heaven fled!”
“I ’ope they don’t take all night,” said Persephone, a little crossly. “Blimey, I’m cold.” She rummaged in her basket again and pulled out a flask. Unstoppering it, she had a gulp of its contents and sighed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“Nothing like a bit of this to take the chill off,” she said, and passed the flask to Lewis. He drank without thinking, and handed it back.
“Oh,” he said. “That was gin, wasn’t it?”
Chants of rejoicing echoed down the tunnel.
“Eh? Course it was. I think our cue’s coming up now—”
“I’m afraid gin combines rather badly with Theobromine,” said Lewis unsteadily.
“With what?” Persephone turned her face to him. He watched in fascination as she became an equation of light and shadow, and then an image of stained glass shining with light. She was telling him something; she was rising and taking his hand, leaving trails of colored light where she moved—
He felt a gentle impact at the back of his head and a tremendous happiness. He was flying down the tunnel, bearing her along with him—the sundering water, rippling with subtle colors, was easily bounded across. He roared the ancient hymn as he came, and heard the eternal masses echoing it back from Paradise.
“Evohe! Evohe! Iacchus! Evohe!” He was in the cave with the altar, but it was full of light; it was glowing like summer, and no longer cold but warm.
“I have taken in the seed, and see what I bring into the light!” Persephone declared. The mortals knelt around him, crowding close, weeping and laughing and catching at his hands.
“Blessed Iacchus, give us hope!”
“Iacchus! The boy Iacchus is come!”
“Iacchus, take away our fear!”
“Make us immortal, Iacchus!”
Demeter and Persephone were greeting each other, with elaborate palms-out rapture, and Persephone was saying, “Behold my son, which is Life come out of Death!”
“Please, Iacchus!” He looked down into old Whitehead’s pleading face, sweating and exhausted. “Let me not be lost in the dark!”
He wept for the mortal man; he touched his face and promised him the moon; he promised them all the moon; he babbled any comforting nonsense he could think of. He tried to stretch out his hand to Persephone, but she had receded somehow, on the golden sea of faces. Everything was golden. Everything was melting into golden music.
Lewis opened his eyes. He looked up; he looked down; he looked from side to side. Doing anything more ambitious than this seemed a bad idea.
He was in bed in the room allotted to him by Sir Francis. Someone had laid him out as carefully as a carving of a saint on a tomb, with the counterpane drawn up to his chest. They had put one of his nightshirts on
him, too. It seemed to be morning.
He closed his eyes again and ran a self-diagnostic. His body told him, quite pointedly, that he’d been extremely stupid. It implied that if he ever subjected it to that kind of abuse again, he was going to find himself in a regeneration tank for at least six months. It stated further that it required complex carbohydrates right now, as well as at least two liters of fluid containing high concentrations of calcium, magnesium, and potassium. He opened his eyes again and looked around to see if anything answering that description was within reach.
No; the nearest fluid of any kind was water on a table beside his bed, in a crystal vase containing a few sprays of late hedge roses. It looked exquisitely wet. He wondered whether he could get the roses out and drink from the vase without making too much of a mess. His body told him it didn’t care whether he made a mess. Groaning, he prepared to sit up.
At that moment he heard the approach of footsteps, two pair. They were accompanied by a slight rattle of china.
The door opened and Sir Francis stuck his head into the room. Seeing Lewis awake, his face brightened extraordinarily.
“Mr. Owens! Thank all the gods you’re with us again at last! You … er, that is … that is you, Mr. Owens?”
“I think so,” said Lewis. Little lightning flashes of headache assailed him.
Sir Francis bustled into the room, waving the butler in after him. Lewis found his gaze riveted on the covered tray the butler carried. Sir Francis sat down on the edge of the bed, staring at Lewis no less fixedly.
“D’you recall much, eh?”
“Not a great deal, my lord,” said Lewis. “That wouldn’t happen to be breakfast, would it?”
The butler lifted the napkin to disclose a pitcher, a small pot of honey, and a dish of little cakes.
Sir Francis twisted his fingers together self-consciously. “That’s, er, milk and honey and, ah, the closest my cook could approximate to ambrosia. The honey comes from Delos,” he said, with a peculiar tone of entreaty in his voice.
Lewis dragged himself into a sitting position, though his brain quailed against the red-hot lining of his skull. The butler set the tray on his lap; he grabbed up the pitcher, ignoring the crystal tumbler provided with it, and drank two quarts of milk straight down without pausing to breathe. Sir Francis watched with round eyes as he gulped the ambrosia cakes one after another, and, seizing up a spoon, started on the honey.
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 69
