by Diana Tyler
“I’m afraid you’ve overestimated my power, or perhaps my jurisdiction. I can no more control your future than Hades’ judges can rule unjustly. Everyone receives what they’ve earned.”
“Fine,” grunted Orpheus, embarrassed by his oversight. Though his appearance may have suggested otherwise, Apollo wasn’t all-powerful. Mightier than he and his cohort, Hades, was the All-Powerful Creator, whose name it was forbidden even to whisper within the vales of hell. “But I must have your word that if I’m successful, nothing will prevent me from getting her back, and back for good.”
Apollo set down the lyre and kneeled on the ground. At first, Orpheus thought he was going to lie prostrate as an expression of his sincerity, but he soon saw that his father was enchanting the stone somehow. Apollo blew on the granite, his lips almost touching it, then brushed both hands back and forth across it in opposite directions, forming two large arcs of spotless, translucent glass.
“Come,” Apollo said. Orpheus obeyed and kneeled beside his father. “Now look.”
Through the glass, Orpheus saw a small, roofless chamber overgrown with dead flowers and withered tamarisks. In the center of the room was a marble bench that seemed to glow amid the gray habitat around it. Scanning a thick trellis of shriveled grapes, Orpheus caught a flash of a vibrant, violet robe, and then a glimpse of flaxen hair.
“Eurydice,” he whispered, as if anything above a whisper would make her vanish.
“We’re holding her here for you,” Apollo said, tapping on the glass with his slender white fingers. “Hades’ wife Persephone furnished the cell herself. It’s no Elysium, which is of course what your wife is accustomed to, but I’m afraid living things don’t fare well in the heart of Hades. Is she just as beautiful as you remember?”
Orpheus pressed his hands against the glass, framing her body with his fingers. He spoke her name louder, trying—foolishly, he knew—to get her attention. She was still too far away, always too far away…
“No song of mine ever came close to describing her decently. ‘Rainbows, sunsets, starlight, the sea, none of it compares with my Eurydice,’” he sang softly.
Apollo stood and pulled Orpheus up by the arm. “She’ll be waiting. When you’re with her in Elysium, you’ll have all of eternity to try and write the perfect serenade for her.”
Orpheus willed himself to turn away as the glass slowly turned opaque; he couldn’t stand to see Eurydice disappear yet again. He picked up his lyre and looked Apollo dead in his bone-chilling eyes. “What do you want me to do?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
EDUCATION
From day one after her parents died, Chloe and her family ate dinner separately. Usually, her aunt Maggie and uncle Travis went to the neighborhood mess hall around the corner, returning in plenty of time to watch an Enochos court case on TV. Chloe and Damian were fortunate enough to have had a chef for a mother, so they knew a thing or two when it came to cooking. However, because it was nearly impossible to find anything other than ice cream and canned soup in the kitchen, they too often resorted to the mess hall’s delivery service and ate alone in their rooms.
Only twice a year was the dining room ever used by all four of them at once: Lycaea Eve before the yearly festival, and on the twins’ birthday. It was always an awkward occasion. They sat together in the formal, dusty dining room, the only sound coming from the icemaker and the air conditioner.
Chloe knew that sacrificing their nightly veg-out routine and purchasing gaudy cakes was her aunt and uncle’s idea of a kind gesture, but Chloe couldn’t help but feel patronized. Sitting there in the hard, ladderback chair, staring at a lukewarm bowl of macaroni and cheese, Chloe always felt simultaneously depressed and overjoyed.
She and Damian were now adults, and graduating in the spring would mean freedom. Freedom from the apathy and selfishness of her aunt and uncle was what she yearned for, and literally dreamed about, but what then?
The thought of going to the university stole her appetite completely. Graduation had been something she’d looked forward to for so long, but now that it was right around the corner, the anticipation had devolved to dread. It wasn’t that she feared the work university would require; she was smart, studious, the quintessential overachiever. What depressed her was the likelihood of abject loneliness. If she felt like a pariah among her own flesh and blood, there was slight chance she would feel accepted among total strangers.
For the first time in eight years, she realized that maybe she hadn’t had it so bad living with guardians who didn’t care about her. At least they threw her a party once a year, however minimal the enthusiasm they put into it. At university, no one would even know she existed.
“So,” Maggie chimed with a put-on, chipper tone, “where’d you run off to earlier, Chlo?”
Chloe hated it when Maggie called her “Chlo,” as if they were best friends.
“Someone gave me a one-day pass for the new museum, so I went,” Chloe said, nonchalantly stirring her noodles.
Travis cleared his throat. “I heard about that on the news. Pretty nice gift, I’d say. It costs a pretty penny to get into that place.”
“My friend works there,” said Chloe. She waited for her brother to sing “Chloe and Ethan, sitting in a tree,” but apparently he’d grown up. His eyes were glued to his cellphone, globs of cheese stuck to the corners of his mouth. So he’d grown up slightly…
“See anything noteworthy?” Maggie asked as she looked down at her watch.
Sure that her aunt was counting the seconds until she could turn on the TV again, Chloe thought back to the odd white building with its secret passageways, the ancient gryphon fossils, the scroll, and of course, Carya and the two walnuts still waiting for her in the bottom of her purse.
Confused, exhilarated, and scared at the same time, Chloe wanted to tell her family how fascinating the visit had been, but she knew that doing so would be risky. By law, all Petrodians were required to report anyone who displayed what the Fantásmata termed paráxeno theáseis, or “strange sightings.” They were two of the most peculiar words Chloe ever had to memorize in school, but she knew their meaning well: “Any supposed encounter with the preternatural that one might associate with fantastical figures or myths from Petrodian lore. The Fantásmata must be notified of any individual who claims to have experienced such a sighting.”
That was all that had ever been written or stated about paráxeno theáseis, but Chloe reasoned that whomever was guilty of encountering them and then squealed about it, or got caught would live to regret it for the rest of their life—if they lived at all.
The Fantásmata didn’t appreciate anything that deviated from the status quo. Just last year, one of Chloe’s teachers had been arrested during class after one of his students told the headmaster that Mr. Boulos had taught that historically, the Lycaea festival had honored Apollo, not the Unknown God. Because this sparked curiosity in a classroom filled with teenagers who questioned everything about everything, Mr. Boulos was accused of “corrupting the youth.” By the end of the day, he was exiled to an undisclosed island “where he’d have no access to anyone to whom he could spread lies.”
If a teacher could be hauled off to a deserted island for including unpopular, peripheral tidbits in his history lesson, Chloe didn’t want to imagine what the Fantásmata might do to someone who purportedly conversed with an ancient being mentioned on a mysterious scroll. She decided it would be best to keep the details of her visit to herself.
“Not really,” she said to Maggie. “Thank you for everything today. I’m going upstairs to get started on a research paper,” she lied.
“What research paper?” asked Damian, but Chloe ignored him and took her dishes to the sink. It wouldn’t hurt him to sweat a little over a made-up assignment.
Chloe took a seat next to her purse on the bed. She reached into it and scooped up the walnuts, wondering why Carya had given her two. She assumed one was a backup in case the other was lost. She placed one on the shelf ab
ove her and cupped the other in her hand, staring at it carefully; scrutinizing it like a jeweler does a diamond. It looked like a walnut, felt like a walnut, it probably tasted like a walnut…
“How do I open this thing?” she muttered before falling back onto her pillow and stuffing the walnut under it.
What in Hades was she doing? Was she really going to eat something given to her by some crazy, well-dressed urchin who just happened to fit the description of a newly discovered, next-to-unknown character named Carya? On the other hand, was she really going to chalk up the bizarre young girl—the “strange sighting,” as the Fantásmata would put it—to a deranged passerby or obnoxious prankster despite what the girl knew about the scroll?
Chloe decided to do what she always did when she felt indecisive: make a pro/con list.
She sat up and reached over her desk for her diary and then its key hidden beneath an empty picture frame with the word Family painted in bold, multicolored letters around all four of its edges. It had been a gift seven birthdays ago, and she’d cried when she realized she’d run out of pictures of her parents to place in it.
She didn’t have any photos of Maggie or Travis, but even if she did, she doubted she could bring herself to insult the frame by filling it with images of her dismal, substitute family. Following an unspoken sibling rule, which dictated that you mustn’t let your brother or sister know you care about them, the pictures she had of Damian were kept in a shoebox under her bed.
It was the joyful-looking frame with its sad symbolism that inspired Chloe’s first entry on the pro side of the list she labeled Pros and Cons of Eating the Weird Walnut.
She unlocked her diary, opened it up, and scribbled: If I eat the walnut and something bad happens and I die, maybe there really is an afterlife and my parents are there waiting for me.
She tapped her chin with the pen and looked at the rain dribbling down the windowpane. She’d never given much thought to an afterlife before. After all, she was eighteen, with fifty-seven years of life still ahead of her before her Coronation. And even after that, death would be no concern of hers; only rare, freak accidents caused death.
When Chloe and Damian were eight years old, their teacher chaperoned their class on a field trip to the Religious Council building downtown. Eight was the age at which Petrodian children learned about the birds and the bees, and life and death, from the religious elite themselves. Every day during one month of the year, no fewer than one hundred and fifty Petrodian children had their innocent eyes opened to the world beyond playgrounds, arithmetic, and grammar.
The most significant memory Chloe had about that day was how frightened she’d felt.
The teacher had led Chloe and her fifteen classmates into a titanium-plated dome that defined the Eirene skyline. The teacher didn’t go inside but left the class with a bald, skinny man with a raspy voice and a nametag that read Head Attendant.
The only words the man had spoken were, “Come with me.”
The class had followed him through enormous ebony doors into a rectangular room lined with columns, the likes of which Chloe had only seen in one chapter of her history book. Nothing so opulent still existed in Petros—at least that’s what she’d thought. Her jaw had dropped at the spectacle of reliefs along the walls, each one depicting, with sharp detail, a scene from nature. There was a flock of geese flying over a frozen river, a lighthouse illuminating a ship at sea, a lone lion hunting through hills.
On the left and right sides of the room stood at least a dozen bronze cauldrons perched on tripods at least fifteen feet tall. Their white-hot flames cast eerie shadows on the ceiling, which itself was a canvas of swirling galaxies and glowing stars. A few feet above the tripods was a line of semicircular clerestory windows that splashed light throughout the hall.
In the center of the room, directly below the brilliant, painted sun, had been an elevated stone platform supporting three tiers of marble benches. Those were occupied by nine old men, the oldest in Petros, all adorned with deep-purple chasubles loosely cinched with golden ropes. Before them, on the mosaic tile floor, were three rows of small, white, square mats. When the unnamed head attendant gestured to them, Chloe and the other children had taken their seats in silence. They shuddered as a gavel was struck against a sound block.
“We welcome you, paidiá,” the chief councilman had welcomed them, using a Próta word that Chloe assumed meant “children.” “Today is a most important day for all Petrodians. What you hear within these walls may not seem important to you now, but one day you’ll be glad we afforded you this privilege.”
That was the beginning of a day that had provided more questions than answers, more confusion than clarity.
First, they’d learned about sex. Chloe remembered, with some amusement, that it had been the easiest part to process. There were a lot of rules regarding sexual intercourse, and they filled an entire notebook on fertility and reproduction given each child, rules such as: “Sexual intercourse may be partaken of after the age of fourteen. At that time, every Petrodian is lawfully bound to visit the Fertility and Reproduction Center to receive a temporary contraceptive injection (TCI), the effects of which will last six years. Should citizens be prohibited by the Fantásmata from procreating, a TCI will be administered again and every sixth year thereafter.”
Chloe’s mind didn’t linger long on those memories. Perhaps she’d revisit them in two years’ time when she learned whether or not she was selected to be a mother. Surely she wouldn’t be. The way she saw it, any potential she might have had to nurture a child had been quashed the day her own mother had been killed.
Chloe’s thoughts were instantly wrangled back to the second subject taught that day before the Religious Council: death…and its non-existence.
CHAPTER NINE
CORONATION
Does anyone here know of a contemporary Petrodian who died prematurely?” the chief councilman had asked. No one’s hand was raised. “Good. That’s very good. As you know, it’s very rare for a Petrodian to die before his or her Coronation.”
Coronation. Chloe hadn’t understood the word then, much less how it could be used to describe the ending of a life.
The councilman had continued. “Thanks to the marvelous advances in medicine and technology, it’s been decades since our society has perished from illness or pestilence. Our highly trained doctors and surgeons treat all injuries sustained through accidents, and indeed can do anything, from erasing all manner of deformity and scarring to making dead hearts beat again. Have any of you known someone whose life was saved with the help one of our physicians?”
A burst of small hands shot up into the air. The councilman took a few minutes to indulge the children, listening patiently to their stories of mended limbs, reconstructed faces, and robotic hands and feet. Then, after every triumph had been recounted, the councilman turned to the head attendant standing at the back of the room and motioned for him to come forward.
“Paidiá, this is Acacius, a long-time friend of the Religious Council,” he said, introducing the attendant. “He went to Limén when he graduated primary school and learned the trade of a custodian. He did so well that his overseer took notice and sent him here, where he kept this building and its surrounding premises spick and span for forty years.”
The councilman rested his hand on Acacius’ shoulder and gave him a proud smile. “When Acacius became an Elder, we promoted him to head attendant with the responsibility of facilitating and leading the various tours and conferences we host throughout the year.”
He turned his smile on the children and eagerly scanned their faces. “Which of you bright young striplings knows what follows elderhood in the life of a Petrodian?”
Chloe had known the answer, but she’d been too timid to give it. Her eyes were riveted on Acacius, whose own gaze was on the floor. With his shoulders stooped and his long thin arms fallen in front of him, he reminded Chloe of a willow tree, curved and leafless in old age.
“I do, Yo
ur Eminence!”
Chloe hadn’t been at all surprised to see it was Damian piping up.
“The cycle of Petrodian life goes from infancy to childhood, then to either child-rearing, labor or one of the noble arts, then elderhood and Coronation,” he said proudly.
“Very good,” the chief councilman said, leaning down to get a better look at the little brownnoser, who beamed back at him. “You will do very well at the university. Perhaps you’ll be in my spot one day.”
The councilman stood and faced Acacius. “And the Coronation. What does that word mean?” he asked the children, tapping his gray goatee with his pointer finger.
Not even Damian knew the answer to that. The children glanced at each other and shrugged, feeling quite sure they hadn’t heard the word “Coronation” in a vocabulary lesson yet.
“A Coronation is a special ceremony. It celebrates one’s graduation from average citizen to ruling sovereign. Every faithful, law-abiding Petrodian is given one.”
Chloe could hardly believe her ears. Her peers oohed and aahed at such a splendid thought. They knew well what “sovereign” meant. Not only was it used multiple times in the ancient myths regarding Zeus and his fellow gods and goddesses, but it also described the most powerful person in Petros, the sovereign minister of the invisible and unknowable Fantásmata.
“What happens during the Coronation, Your Eminence?” asked one of Chloe’s classmates, a bony redheaded girl named Agnes.
“Well, I’m glad you asked,” said the councilman, now within a foot of Acacius. He reached out and put his hand on the man’s shoulder, but Acacius remained still. “Acacius’ seventy-fifth birthday is today, which means it’s also his Coronation day.” The hall echoed with handclaps until they were shushed by another council member. “What happens is very, very sacred, and only a chosen few are privy to its exact details. They are the ones who make all the appropriate arrangements, just like your parents do when planning your birthday parties.”
