She tried to smile. “How do you know I always am?”
He only looked away. “Well.” He was silent a little while, then glanced at her again, and lifted his eyebrows. “Ready for today’s last big decision?”
Only one more? She could handle that. “Sure.”
Adrian led her over the hills and turned onto a path that twisted down into a valley. A grove of black trees lay far ahead. The souls watched Adrian and Sophie, and even drew close to reach out and let their hands pass through Sophie’s arm. After the encounter with Grandpop, she found it more moving than spooky.
As she observed them in return, she noticed some of them holding hands. At least upon death you and your fellow departed could still touch each other, even if you couldn’t touch the world of the living.
“Grandpop seemed to have an idea why you brought me here,” she said as they drew closer to the dark forest. “Am I going to find out soon?”
“Some of it. If you choose.”
“That’s my decision? Whether or not to learn what I’m doing here?”
“Partly. It’s more complicated than that.” He entered the grove.
Sophie followed. A whisper of wind, smelling of dank rock, swished through her hair and rustled the leaves. She shivered and folded her arms. Kiri slowed down to sniff the ground. Dead leaves crackled under Sophie’s shoes as she walked. Branches thick with black foliage and red fruit formed a low ceiling over their heads. The souls didn’t enter this grove much, she noticed—they seemed to prefer the open spaces—and without their glow the forest was dark.
Adrian switched on a tiny key-ring flashlight, sending a wedge of bright LED light onto the tree trunks and the ground. “The number of flashlights I’ve had to buy since coming down here,” he murmured.
“You don’t live down here, though?”
“Um. I kind of do.”
“Why?”
“It’s headquarters, for me.”
“You’re, what, some kind of messenger between the dead and the living?”
“That’s part of it.”
Adrian stopped and shone the light up into the canopy, as if searching for something.
She looked up too. The red fruits might have been apples, though she couldn’t get a close enough look to be sure.
Reaching up, he plucked one off the tree. The branch whipped back. “This, Sophie, is your big decision.” Adrian regarded her, his dark gaze barely straying from her face as he sank his thumbnail into the flower-like protrusion at the bottom of the fruit.
Not apples. Pomegranates. As soon as she recognized the fruit, another Greek myth snapped into place in her head: Persephone, kidnapped by Hades and brought to the Underworld, was tricked into eating a few pomegranate seeds, and therefore had to return to the land of the dead for part of every year even after she was rescued and brought above ground by her mother Demeter.
The recollection of the myth gave her a chill. She stared at the pomegranate in the hand of a man who’d brought her to an underground land of the dead.
Adrian ripped open the fruit, and held out a ragged quarter of it to her. Ruby-red seeds studded its interior.
She looked up into Adrian’s eyes. They were imploring, sad, hopeful. Keeping her gaze upon his, she took the piece of fruit and cupped it in her palm. A single drop of juice ran down her fingers.
“Will you eat some?” he asked her.
“What happens if I do? Do I get trapped here for half of every year?”
He blinked and hesitated. “No. It unlocks your mind. It makes you remember everything you used to know about this place—and about me, and about your past lives. You gain the knowledge you’d have if you were one of the souls, only without dying.”
Her hands went cold with apprehension and sharp curiosity. “Is that what happened to you three years ago? When you first came here, with someone else? They fed you one of these pomegranates?”
“Yeah. She offered it to me, and I accepted, and it started everything off.”
Sophie wondered who “she” was, but that question could wait. She eyed the dark, shining seeds. “Is this what gave you your super-abilities?”
“Not really. That’s a different story. Part of which you’ll know, if you eat it.”
She tilted the piece of pomegranate back and forth on her palm, trying to reason out what he was after. “Why not bring me the pomegranate at the dorm? Make friends with me, offer me a piece of fruit one day, like a normal person?”
“Lots of reasons. Most important being, the magic only works here. Eating it outside the cave wouldn’t do anything.”
She continued holding the piece of fruit. “Okay. I still don’t see why you’re doing this to me.”
“But you will see, if you eat it.”
“What if you’re trying to poison me?”
“I’m not. Here, I’ll eat some too. See?” He tore off a small section from the fruit, bit into the array of seeds with a crunch, and wiped at his mouth with his sleeve.
“But you have super-strength. Maybe you’re immune to it while I wouldn’t be.”
“If I wanted to kill you, I’d have let you fall out of the bus. Or let the lion eat you. I promise, I’m not out to hurt you.”
Sophie looked at the pomegranate again, touching her lips with her tongue. She hadn’t eaten since dinner, and that was hours ago, and she was hungry. But a hallucinogenic snack wasn’t what she’d had in mind. Then again, she did want to know all the answers he kept withholding. She loosened a few of the seeds and let them roll into her other palm. “Will it hurt?” she asked.
“Physically, no,” Adrian said. “But unlocking all that information in your brain—well, it does send a lot of ripples through your life.”
Sophie stared at the plump red seeds in her fingers. She swallowed the saliva gathering under her tongue. Then she overturned her hand and let the fruit and its seeds drop onto the ground. “No. I’m not eating it.”
He groaned, and for a moment turned into an impatient adolescent. “Come on. Seriously?”
His derision only fortified her stubbornness. She dusted off her hands. “I came down here to see Grandpop, not take drugs.”
Adrian sighed, glaring off into the forest. “But all those questions you had, this would start answering them.” He thrust the remaining piece at her.
“I think I better go back to the regular world. You will take me back, right?”
He stared at her a few seconds, then dropped the rest of the pomegranate on the ground. “Right. Fine.” He wheeled around, and tromped forward on the path. “This way.”
Sophie followed him out of the grove. That was it? That was the whole big decision? Saying yes or no to a mouthful of pomegranate seeds? She began suspecting she’d fallen victim to an elaborate hoax put together by someone who was a little too obsessed with the Persephone myth.
She followed Adrian out of the forest and back into the grassy fields. After a few minutes of stony silence, he started to look calmer again, so she ventured a question.
“How does anything grow down here? Does it ever get sun?”
“No sun. This place just has its own…magic, I suppose is the word.”
Considering she got here via flying ghost horses, and was surrounded by millions of glowing dead humans, she was willing to accept magic as an answer. Provided it wasn’t all some sort of hallucinogenic hoax.
“What was the language you spoke when you asked the other souls to find Grandpop?” she asked.
“The language of the Underworld.” Immediately he closed his mouth and darted a glance at her, as if he hadn’t meant to say that. Then he added, “It’s a Tower of Babel down here. People from all over the world. So the way they communicate is with one language everyone knows. Everyone dead, anyway.”
“And you.”
“Yeah.”
She filed away the word “Underworld” in her head. Interesting. That matched Greek mythology too.
A little tributary stream, no wider than her hand, t
umbled along the base of a valley. Sophie stepped over it, following Kiri and Adrian. She glanced over her shoulder at the stream, and bumped into Adrian, who had stopped.
He stood frowning, head turned as if listening to something far off.
“What?” said Sophie.
Adrian sighed after a moment. “It’s only…I’m afraid I’m in for a lecture.”
“A lecture?”
“Adrian!” called a woman, somewhere beyond the hill. Her voice echoed in the cave, and the souls whispered in a ripple of quietly interested remarks. Kiri gave an excited yelp, and bounded away in the direction of the voice.
“Adrian!” The voice was closer, and soon was followed by the woman herself, striding angrily over the crest of the hill. Kiri circled her, tongue hanging out, as if herding one of her favorite cows into the pasture.
The woman was tall and leanly muscular, and her long sheath-style red dress flapped against her bare legs as she approached.
“I know, I’m sorry,” Adrian said by way of greeting.
The woman stopped to infuse him with a look of serious exasperation, which was a powerful expression on an already striking face. Sophie guessed she was perhaps thirty, but it was hard to say. Tightly spiraling dark brown hair made a cloud around her face and shoulders. She was brown-skinned, darker than Sophie by a few shades, making her look properly African.
She turned to Sophie, and her gaze softened into compassion. “What has he shown you?” Her accent was fairly strong, though whether it was from Africa or Europe or elsewhere, Sophie couldn’t gauge.
Sophie glanced in hesitation at Adrian. “Well…my grandfather’s soul. And the pomegranates.”
“Did you eat one?”
“No.”
“Good.” Hands on hips, the woman turned to glare at Adrian. “Now? So soon? Like this?”
“I was about to return her,” Adrian said.
“What ever made you think this was wise?” The woman exhaled through her nose, and turned again to Sophie. “My dear, I am sorry. He was wrong to do this to you.”
“It’s okay.” Sophie wasn’t sure what else to say.
“He will return you at once. We will do our best to protect you against the opposition, as Adrian calls them, but I hope it won’t be a problem.”
Sophie cleared her throat. “Um, I don’t really understand who that is. The opposition.”
“If we are lucky, you won’t have to worry about it,” the woman said. “Not if you go about your normal life, the way you should at your age.” She directed the last statement at Adrian, though seemingly it still referred to Sophie.
“I was her age when you found me,” he defended.
Sophie’s ears perked up. So this was the person who’d brought Adrian here and fed him the pomegranate?
“Your circumstances were different,” the woman said. “There’s nothing wrong with her life.”
Sophie could have argued the point. Her mom, in all likelihood, was involved with another man. Also, the family needed money, what with the farmhouse’s dilapidated condition, Liam’s frequent doctor bills for broken limbs due to skateboarding injuries, her mother’s tuition for the M.B.A. she was pursuing, and now Sophie’s own tuition. The fruit stand had never brought in much profit, but it was all her parents had done for the last couple of decades, and was all they wanted to do. Even the M.B.A. was intended only to improve the family business.
In addition, Sophie needed to find a job and balance it with her classes, settle into dorm life and make new friends, and decide what to do about Jacob now that they were forty miles apart.
But she had no idea what Adrian’s life had been like before all this, except that his mother had died when he was young. Maybe her life really was a walk in the park so far, in comparison.
“I’m taking her home,” Adrian promised the woman.
“Good.” The woman laid warm hands upon Sophie’s upper arms. “Don’t worry. We’re your friends. It will make sense eventually. Try to forget about all this in the meantime.”
Forget about this? The most bizarre, amazing thing that had ever happened to her? Not a chance. Still, something about the woman compelled reverent answers, so Sophie nodded and said, “I’ll try.”
The woman answered with a firm nod as if Sophie had spoken wisely. Then she turned and glared at Adrian. “Now, if you please.”
Chapter Six
GIVEN HOW LONG SHE KNEW the flight to be, Sophie was glad when Adrian suggested visiting the restroom first. He helped her across the river on the raft, then picked up a camping lantern sitting next to a tunnel, switched it on, and guided her into the passage. The tunnel descended via uneven steps in some places, turned a few times, ascended in more steps, and had several sub-tunnels branching off it along the way. Sometimes she caught the sound of trickling water, accompanied by a smell of wet rock, as if the river or one of its underground tributaries was near. In the lantern’s glow, the walls and floor sparkled and flashed in all colors. She realized the cave was studded with gems. For all she knew, those pebbles crunching under her shoes were literal diamonds in the rough.
Despite that attractive quality, the tunnels gave her the creeps. They were so dark, dark as only a cave could be. She already knew ghosts were down here, so what else lurked down these passages?
In a minute or two, they entered a room with modern furniture and a high ceiling, though not as high as the one above the spirit fields. A four-poster bed with dark blankets stood against the far wall. It looked fairly new and clean, not the moldering, dusty antique she might expect in a world of the dead.
While Sophie paused to look in curiosity at the bed, Adrian pointed toward the right. “Bathroom’s back there.”
She stepped that way, glancing again at the bed. “This is where you sleep?”
“Yeah, when I’m here. I, um, did put in plumbing, but no electricity yet. So grab one of the flashlights in the box by the door.”
Sophie walked to the “door,” which was actually a curtain, and picked up a button LED light from the cardboard box beside it. With a click, it came on, and she pushed through the curtain to find herself in a small dead-end tunnel. Toilet, sink, tub, and water heater all looked new and standard, thank goodness. She gladly made use of the first two, setting the light on the granite counter.
While washing her hands a minute later in the tap, she noticed a gleam of green on the wall, catching the light of the LED.
Thinking it might be an emerald, she dried her hands with the red towel sitting on the counter, and picked up the light to shine it at the green spark. She found it was a set of dog tags sitting on a tiny ledge. One of the tags was green and shaped like a diamond. The others displayed identification numbers and vaccination proofs, as dogs usually wore, but the green one said:
KIRI
Adrian Watts
18 Titan Street
Wellington
It carried a phone number as well, but the name and address were all Sophie could reliably commit to memory on the spot. She read the inscription over and over for half a minute, fingers tingling. Then she set the tags back on the ledge, careful not to let the metal clink audibly, and went out. She switched off the LED and dropped it in the box on her way to Adrian. He handed her the lantern and walked to the bathroom himself.
Watts. That perhaps explained “Watson” as an alias—”Watts-on,” Nikolaos had playfully pronounced it.
She wandered over to Kiri and petted the dog’s head, then combed her fingers through the thick fur at her neck. It was enough to verify that Kiri wore no collar, and thus no tags. Sophie wondered a little why they’d been removed, or whether maybe the tags didn’t belong to this dog. But mainly she wondered how fast she could get home, get online, and find out everything she could about Mr. Adrian Watts of 18 Titan Street, Wellington, New Zealand.
SO SHE’D REFUSED the pomegranate. Well. Adrian did have one trick up his sleeve, if he dared use it. As he emerged from his turn in the bathroom, his gaze traveled to the pl
astic crate of food by the bedchamber wall.
Impulse triumphed. He veered over there.
“Midnight snack?” Adrian pulled a pair of granola bars and two small juice bottles from the crate, and held them up. He tried to look aloof, not letting his eyes give anything away.
She studied the snacks, and shrugged, noncommittal.
He twisted the cap off a bottle and handed the juice to her, along with a granola bar.
“I think I could’ve handled the cap myself,” she remarked, but took it, read the label, and sniffed at the juice.
“Should be fresh.” He sipped from his own bottle, heart thumping. “Just bought it last week.”
He knew she was checking for copious amounts of alcohol or noticeable drugs. Her first sip was tiny, and she licked her lips and examined the label again before evidently deciding it was safe, and taking another drink.
Panic and remorse leaped up in his chest for a moment, and he almost knocked the bottle out of her hand. But it was too late. She’d swallowed it. Swallowed the juice he had doctored, at Nikolaos’ suggestion, pouring out half of it and replacing it with juice squeezed from the Underworld’s pomegranates. The tart cranberry-grape juice masked the taste; she’d never guess. Just as Niko predicted.
Adrian lowered his face, wiping a spilled drop off the outside of his bottle, his fingers trembling.
Would it even work, the juice alone? Did you have to eat the whole seed? They had no idea. But what had originally struck him as a clever if sneaky idea now seemed like a horrible date-rapist maneuver. Why did he ever listen to Niko? It was surely illegal, experimenting on someone without her consent.
“It isn’t a drug,” Niko had assured him. “It’s just fruit juice, which stirs up knowledge her soul already had.” Oh, he knew how to manipulate people, all right, that trickster.
The worst of it was, Adrian couldn’t help feeling elated. Please let it work, he begged, against all his better counsel.
He lifted his face. “Shall we get back, then?”
Biting off a corner of granola bar, she nodded.
Persephone's Orchard (The Chrysomelia Stories) Page 6
