Downcast

by Cait Reynolds

  I turned to Haley, but he simply kept his eyes on Mr. Brown, an expression of intense concentration in his eyes, but with a thin smirk on his lips.

  Mr. Brown cleared his throat and read:

  Here, where the world is quiet,

  Here, where all trouble seems

  Dead winds' and spent waves' riot

  In doubtful dreams of dreams;

  I watch the green field growing

  For reaping folk and sowing,

  For harvest-time and mowing,

  A sleepy world of streams.

  I am tired of tears and laughter,

  And men that laugh and weep;

  Of what may come hereafter

  For men that sow to reap:

  I am weary of days and hours,

  Blown buds of barren flowers,

  Desires and dreams and powers

  And everything but sleep.

  I frowned with the effort of trying to understand the exact meaning of the poem. He seemed to be describing somewhere bleak and otherworldly, and there was a lot of sentiment about being weary of life. But, I still didn’t know why Haley thought this was so important for me to hear.

  No growth of moor or coppice,

  No heather-flower or vine,

  But bloomless buds of poppies,

  Green grapes of Proserpine,

  Pale beds of blowing rushes,

  Where no leaf blooms or blushes

  Save this whereout she crushes

  For dead men deadly wine.

  Mr. Brown frowned and stammered over a few words, his eyelids fluttering briefly until he seemed to find his place. Except, when I caught up to where he was reading, it looked like he had skipped a major chunk of the poem. Glancing over at Haley, I saw him nodding and mouthing the words along with Mr. Brown. I scrambled to listen to the words, reading them on the page at the same time to make sure I understood everything.

  Pale, beyond porch and portal,

  Crowned with calm leaves, she stands

  Who gathers all things mortal

  With cold immortal hands;

  Her languid lips are sweeter

  Than love's who fears to greet her

  To men that mix and meet her

  From many times and lands.

  She waits for each and other,

  She waits for all men born;

  Forgets the earth her mother,

  The life of fruits and corn;

  And spring and seed and swallow

  Take wing for her and follow

  Where summer song rings hollow

  And flowers are put to scorn.

  Okay, as far as I could tell, the poem was describing some kind of goddess of death. Sorta. I was confused because it also sounded like she was all about spring and summer and things that grew. My head was throbbing even worse, and I swore it was making me start to hear things. I strained harder to catch the whispers I thought I heard behind Mr. Brown’s voice. It was like his voice had a shadow, and it was trying to tell me something.

  Mr. Brown faltered again, and I gritted my teeth against my aching head and scanned the poem for the place he had jumped to.

  From too much love of living,

  From hope and fear set free,

  We thank with brief thanksgiving

  Whatever gods may be

  That no life lives forever;

  That dead men rise up never;

  That even the weariest river

  Winds somewhere safe to sea.

  I waited for Mr. Brown to finish the poem because there was another verse on the page, but he simply stopped reading. A giant bell in some dark tower was ringing in my head, filling my head with painful sound. There was something obvious right in front of me, but it was all too loud, with too many bright colors and giant shapes for me to see it clearly. I was burning up. Even my eyeballs felt scorched.

  "Everything alright, Miss Starr?"

  Mr. Brown's normal, non-purple-face voice got my attention in no uncertain terms. My head snapped up, and I gaped at him, caught but unsure what to say.

  Instantly, he shaded his eyes and turned his face away from me. The other students were blinking and looking around, expressions sleepy and puzzled. I noticed, though, that every time one of them happened to look at me, it was the same reaction: a wince before immediately looking away.

  I turned to Haley, and even he seemed to be squinting at me a little, worry written on his brows and the downturn of his lips.

  "Mr. Brown, I believe I need to help Stephanie get to the nurse," he said, his voice so liquid and smooth that I even I was agreeing before I realized what he was saying.

  Apparently, Mr. Brown felt the same way because he nodded robotically, his eyes firmly fixed on the book in his hands.

  "Hurry, princess," Haley urged me as he practically dragged me down the hall toward the staircase, hooking his fingers through my belt loops to pull me along.

  "I'm coming!" I panted.

  "A little faster, princess."

  "Why? What’s happening?"

  Haley stopped abruptly, spun me around into his arms, and kissed me.

  Or, at least he tried to.

  The moment his lips were against mine, he hissed and jumped back, his hand automatically going to his lips as if he had been burned.

  Oh. My. God.

  He had been burned! I had burned him!

  "Does that answer why?" he said ruefully, looking away and careful not to touch my skin again. "Right now, you're dangerous. You're so dangerous that if we can't fix you, you’ll end up killing everyone in this school. I’d tell you more, but we really don’t have time."

  My heart stopped. Hysterical laughter was only moments away.

  "Okay," I whispered. "That's a pretty good reason. Let's go."

  ***

  The library? Why would Haley bring me here, of all places? He had said he was taking me to see the nurse. If I was going to go thermonuclear for some reason, I was pretty sure he probably should have just taken me to the facilities guys. After all, they were the ones who had fixed the boiler the other day.

  "Wait here," Haley said, leaving me by the door and positioning me so that I faced the wall, away from anybody who would pass by. "I need to make sure no one will see you."

  "Do I look that bad?" I wondered aloud. "Like, am I Medusa now or something?"

  "Poor Medusa. Let that be a lesson about insulting a poet."

  "Wait, what?"

  "I will be right back."

  I rocked between frustration and numbness. Thankfully, Haley returned within a few moments, and he gestured for me to walk through the door. It seemed so odd that for the first time since school started, he didn't stare at me or reach out to touch me. I missed his eyes and his fingers.

  "In that office," he directed me.

  Well, color me not surprised. I was in Katie Jones' office. I slumped into a chair in front of her desk in the small room, and Haley stood behind me. When she walked in, I looked up at her.

  And I almost bit my tongue in half.

  Katie Jones no longer had blue eyes. Her irises were now swirling, glittering kaleidoscopes of every color imaginable. Her skin was as pale as Haley's, and her black hair stirred restlessly, even though she herself didn't move.

  "Dial it down a bit, Miss Jones," Haley said drily from behind me. "This is hard enough, without you deciding to show off."

  She gave him an arched wink, and her swirling eyes stilled and consolidated in the deep midnight blue I was used to. Her hair sat flat and still around her shoulders, and her cheeks were now flushed.

  "Oh dear," she tsked. "Look at you. You're a mess. What happened?"

  "Um..." My mind flailed around, trying to come up with a good reason to tell her everything. After all, she had been at the house with my mother and clearly knew more than she let on.

  "Tell her," he urged. "She is on our side. She is the only one who can help you right now."

  “Why?”

  “Can we fix you first? Before you dest
roy everyone in the school?”

  “Oh, right.”

  I fought the urge to laugh hysterically and told the librarian everything. I even told her about what I thought had been a dream last night, with my mother's insane behavior, the light, and the heat. She gasped at that, and her eyes narrowed as she began to drum her fingers on her desk.

  "Right," she said crisply, after I had finished. "Well, this was all going splendidly until Deborah decided to take a trip down the crazy aisle in the store. I don't know what she was thinking. She could have killed you!"

  In shock, I clutched at the angular wood armrests of the chair.

  Only to hear them crack and splinter under my fingers.

  "Oh my God!" I whispered, looking down in horror at what I had done.

  Katie Jones was on her feet and out the door of her office in a flash, then back just as quickly with a cup of water from the water fountain outside.

  "This is completely unacceptable," she muttered as she set the water down then cleared her desk. "Why they ever gave her charge of living things when she is so desperately temperamental is beyond me. Really, shirking her responsibilities all this time, just to play house! Ah, there. It's not much, but it will do for a temporary fix."

  While talking to herself, she had gone around her office, running her fingers along every surface she could find and sweeping whatever dust was on it into her hand. She had a decent-sized baby dust bunny in her hand when she was done, then dumped it into the cup of water.

  "Haley, please step outside," she said, and the pinch of terror got a little tighter as he obeyed without question.

  Her eyes began to swirl again, and I felt that same restless energy in the air, brushing at my legs and crawling under my skin.

  "Close your eyes, please, Stephanie," she said, her voice oddly like the silvery cascade of chimes.

  I did as she told me, my body tense as I listened for every little sound of what she was doing. I heard the quiet slosh of water and then nothing. The air around me began to buzz and vibrate, making my skin itch and tingle.

  Then a damp coolness enveloped me, finding its way through, under, and around my clothes, touching every part of my body. It was fresh and soothing, like putting aloe vera over a sunburn, and just like aloe vera, I felt it soak into my skin. Risking a peek at my hands, I saw that the green swirly things were gone, and my skin was back to its normal, pale, opaque self.

  The buzzing ended abruptly, and I slumped limply down in the chair. The door behind me opened, and Haley was instantly by my side, taking my hand in his. His touch was a relief in so many ways. It was the only thing that was solid and certain in my world at that moment.

  Haley's cool fingers were on my chin, turning my face to him. His smile filled my vision, and for a whole glorious moment, all I felt was bliss at being with him. Then, like picnic ants, all my other worries and fears came marching back in.

  "You said my mother could have killed me," I said, turning to her. "What do you mean? What happened? What did you do?"

  Her lips quivered in a smile.

  "I believe Mr. Brown was intending to assign a short paper on A.C. Swinburne at the end of class today," she said lightly. "You read ‘In the Garden of Proserpine’ in class?"

  "Yes," I answered, tense, as I waited for the supremely frustrating, un-figure-out-able clue that I now knew was coming.

  "It might be worth considering The Proserpine Puzzle as a topic for your paper," she said. "It's a riddle that Swinburne wrote when he was working on that particular poem."

  "Where do I find it?"

  "Where else?" Katie Jones laughed. "The Internet."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  AT LUNCH, I smiled as I watched Morris, thinking how beautiful my friend was just below the surface of his skin as his giant brain attacked the task of unearthing The Proserpine Puzzle from the depths of the Internet.

  The joy of Morris at being able to ferret out obscure information on the Internet can't adequately be described by mere words. There was an eerie smirk that crossed his thin lips as they curled up in an almost-sinister smile, and his eyes narrowed like a cat's while his fingers flew over the keyboard. He went from being a nerdy weather geek to being a sexy anime hero...except for the glasses, braces, and whole gangly body where each part seemed to be growing at a different rate.

  More than that, though, was the secret elation Snub Clubbers felt when they got to flex intellectual and creative muscles, even though it’s what got them labeled as “weird” and made their lives miserable in school.

  My initial search engine query had produced nothing but endless variations of the poem. But with Morris? It was like watching an artist, well, a really sarcastic artist at work.

  Roast beef sandwich forgotten, he muttered things like, "FTP crap," or, "Really, Wayback Machine?" or, "Restricted archive whatever."

  Helen, despite working on Swinburne's poem, was far more practical about lunch, eating her Hot Pocket and slapping Zack as necessary when he tried to charm his way into her personal space. I could have told him there was absolutely no point in trying his luck when she was in I Don't Have Time For This mode. Then again, he was smiling, so maybe enjoyed it.

  Helen's other Hot Pocket sat in front of me, but all I could do was stare at it. I had no desire to eat anything. I sat in Haley's lap, limply laying against his lean chest and resting my head on his shoulder. My eyes kept drifting closed, and the sleep of utter exhaustion kept tugging at me, numbing me to the various traumas of the morning.

  "Tired?" Haley asked softly, tightening his arms around my waist.

  "Exhausted," I replied. "It's like every cell in my body was put through the wringer."

  "Not so far from the truth," Zack chuckled, sliding his arm along the back of Helen's chair in a not-so-smooth move.

  "Excuse me?" My indignation came out kitten-level despite my inner lion roaring in frustration from yet another half-hint.

  Zack smiled apologetically, though there was something tight and stern in the tension around his eyes as he looked at me. Suddenly, I wondered if he was playing the biggest game of all.

  "Screw you, Wikipedia," Helen announced, clearly peeved.

  "What's wrong?" Zack asked, gently resting his hand on her shoulder, only to have her brusquely flick it off.

  "I hate it when people edit the entries and mix up Greeks and Romans."

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I looked up ‘Proserpine’ and the first thing in the entry says that she is the daughter of Demeter. Thing is, Proserpine is a Roman name and Demeter is a Greek name.”

  “So, what should it be?” I yawned.

  “If you go with the Greeks, it’s Demeter and her daughter Persephone.”

  I chuckled weakly. “I like the sound of ‘Persephone’ better than ‘Proserpine.’ But, who was she, anyway?”

  "Persephone is the Greek goddess of Spring and new life," Helen replied. "She is the daughter of Demeter, goddess of fertility, growing things, life, and harvest. Persephone is also the wife of Hades, god of the Underworld, and she spends six months of the year above ground, with her mother, and six months of the year underground, with her husband. That's supposedly how we get summer and winter."

  "Sounds like Persephone needs to move out and get an apartment of her own," I joked. "Six months underground? Yuck!"

  "Don't forget six months with her mother, who basically threatened to kill off all of humanity, if her daughter wasn't returned to her," Helen said.

  "Returned to her?" I asked. Haley's body stiffened against me, and his fingers convulsively dug into me where he held me.

  "Hades fell in love with her at first sight and kidnapped her, taking her to the Underworld," she answered. "The Underworld isn't Hell like we think of it. It has the Elysian Fields as well, which is kind of like our Heaven. All souls go to the Underworld after death. They just kind of get sorted out when they arrive."

  "So, what happened when Persephone was kidnapped by Hades?"


  "Well, it doesn't say much about Persephone herself or what she thinks in the original myth. But Demeter went nutso and basically refused to show up for work. She wouldn't let anything grow, and she wandered the world, mourning for her lost daughter. Zeus saw humanity dying off because of food shortages, and he ordered Hermes, the messenger god, to go get Persephone from Hades, in order to save humanity."

  "Zeus seems like a pretty reasonable dude," Zack remarked with a smile, earning him an eye roll from Helen.

  "Anyway, Zeus was basically pulling rank on his brother, Hades, and forcing him to give Persephone back. Hermes explained the whole deal, and Hades sadly agreed. Except, it turns out that Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds from one of the trees in Hades' palace, and she was now bound to him."

  "That meant that Persephone would end up spending six months with Hades and six months with Demeter, creating winter and summer, blah, blah, blah," Helen concluded.

  "That's right, beg!" Morris exclaimed, his eyes glued to his computer screen. "Who's your daddy now, Balliol archives?"

  Helen and I stared at each other blankly. I shook my head and shrugged.

  "He's your friend," I said.

  "You met him first," she retorted.

  "You take classes with him."

  "That's not my fault. You're the one who tried to help him find a portal to Narnia in the janitor’s closet."

  "That was third grade."

  "Not an excuse."

  "Dude, is this a girl fight?" Zack jumped in, grinning. "Are you guys gonna mud wrestle?"

  "Not winning points here, Zack," I said drily.

  "Chauvinistic pig," Helen added.

  "I can be an animal, but I'd never be a pig," Zack replied, sitting up straight and looking slightly offended.

  "Mmmm," Haley hummed softly against my neck. "Bacon."

  My guffaw was a little limp from being so freaking tired and came out as kind of a choking snort.

  "Um, is anybody actually interested in hearing what I found?" Morris demanded, aggrieved.

  "Yes!" Helen and I said in unison.

  "Okay," Morris replied, mollified. "Just so you all appreciate my spectacularly mad skills, I want you to know that I had to dig deep into Balliol College's archives at Oxford for Swinburne's unpublished stuff. I almost went blind reading this PDF of this eighteen eighty-nine book to find the single reference in it to the puzzle. You can all worship my brilliance now."