Nightsong

by Michael Cadnum

  The rumble of Sisyphus’s boulder, the snapping squabble of the vultures had ceased. In the corridors, the shade of a human ghost, joined by several others, stood rapt to catch the last echoes of music that even then reverberated through the underworld.

  At last the silence was complete, and Persephone turned and put a slender hand on the forearm of her husband – just once, a single touch.

  For a long while nothing moved. No Fury made an utterance, and no shade drifted back to its resting place. The impassive Hades remained as he had been, and made no sound.

  But then he moved, very slowly.

  The veiled shape of Hades shifted on his throne, just slightly, turning back toward Persephone. The great figure lifted a single, blackly jeweled finger, and like a monarch that did nothing in haste, he leaned heavily toward the queen.

  The veil fluttered softly before his lips.

  The whisper he gave was wordless to Orpheus’s ears, but Persephone caught its meaning.

  She put her hands together, a gesture of relief and quiet thanksgiving.

  “You may take Eurydice back into the daylight,” said Persephone, a thrill in her voice.

  Orpheus was unable to respond at first – hopeful anticipation was equally mingled with disbelief in the poet’s heart.

  “You may return her to life,” said Persephone with a smile. But then she lifted a hand, a warning gesture. “But there is one condition you must observe without fail, Prince Orpheus.”

  “I will do anything,” responded Orpheus. “What task must I perform to bring Eurydice to the world of the living?”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “My lord and husband decrees that you may return Eurydice to the living, Prince Orpheus,” said Persephone with a pensive smile, “but on one very firm and unwavering condition.”

  “I will pay any price,” said Orpheus excitedly.

  She silenced him, lifting a hand. “On the journey,” she continued, “you must not turn back to look at her – not even once.”

  The poet considered. This would certainly be a relatively easy restriction to fulfill, he thought. “There is no additional condition?”

  “You must not look upon her for a single moment, Orpheus,” Persephone insisted earnestly, “once you have departed from this palace. Do you understand?”

  “Indeed I do,” responded the poet with increasing enthusiasm.

  “There will be no second opportunity,” said Persephone. “If you lose her again, Prince Orpheus, she will be lost forever.”

  Orpheus gave an excited laugh, his pulse racing.

  “I promise,” the poet said, “that I will lead the way – and not look back until we emerge from this domain.” The young mortal could not add another word, so great was his excitement – and his growing faith that he was close to seeing Eurydice again.

  “I shall call for her, then,” said Persephone in a low voice, half question, half promise.

  “Please, great queen,” Orpheus managed to say, “send for my beloved.”

  Persephone smiled, closed her eyes, and whispered, “Eurydice!”

  A soft wind took up the syllables, the name cascading through the corridors of the palace, out into the muted plain beyond. The gathered Furies joined in, a chorus of half-voiced calls.

  Eurydice!

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Nothing happened.

  For a long, seemingly endless moment there was no running figure, no breathless laugh, no longed-for voice calling his name. Orpheus began to dread that the promise would be mocked with failure – or, even worse, that some dim, tattered shade would appear, not at all like a living woman.

  Nothing. There was no greeting cry, no loving smile. Orpheus was embittered with his own, tantalizing hope.

  Until he heard a footfall.

  A shuffling, limping approach.

  Eurydice groped her way, her stride still stricken by the serpent’s bite, into the shadowy light of the great hall.

  While the poet was ecstatic at the sight of her, he felt remorse, too, at the sight of her suffering.

  “Are you in pain, Eurydice?” he asked, reaching out – and nearly succeeding in touching her.

  Yes, she would have said, if she had found the power to speak at that moment. And yet this was not true pain, Eurydice knew. The real agony had been in those last moments, the viper’s fangs hooked deep into her foot, all the way to the bone, while the venom shriveled her heart.

  Eurydice tentatively, and with effort, made sense of what was happening to her. She had no reason to easily trust her senses. Death had been like peaceful sleep, dreamless and without pain. Suddenly called again to awareness, she did not want to give herself too freely to happiness – all this might prove to be a fugitive vision. Could it be that Orpheus had died, too, and joined her here as a faded soul?

  The twin fang punctures in her ankle were bleeding again. She trembled, her heart beating unsteadily, breath haltingly expanding and contracting in her cold lungs. Certainly, she told herself, her beloved looked like a living human being. Orpheus had color in his cheeks, and vitality in his eyes.

  She was eager to touch the poet, hold him, and yet she faltered, fearful of the mantled, veiled figure on the throne beside smiling, pale-featured Persephone.

  Increasingly joyful as she was, she had been a king’s daughter, accustomed to complex agreements and diplomatic turnabouts. She surmised that some dread contract had been struck, one that must be strictly observed.

  For this reason, as she put her cold hand into Orpheus’s warm grasp at last, she said, “My love, what promises have you given to bring me forth?”

  Her voice was shaky, merely a torn whisper, but the son of Calliope understood her well. Orpheus took both her icy hands, and laughed, gathering her into his arms – gently, as though he could injure her too easily. Her flesh remained cold – but warmer by the moment.

  He described the simple condition.

  How fast his heart was beating, she thought, her own pulse stirring and gradually keeping its pace.

  “That’s the only vow you have made?” she queried when she had heard everything. “That you not look back to see me?”

  She put her hand on his face, and ran her fingertips over his features. For the first time she felt the spark of deliverance.

  5

  TWENTY-SIX

  Orpheus and Eurydice made all possible haste.

  The two lovers were in too great a hurry to spare a moment to watch the rumbling progress of Sisyphus’s boulder, commencing once again on its relentless course.

  They approached the river Styx breathlessly, and waited there as the lopsided ferry surged toward them, the three-headed beast on the riverbank growling and snapping, restrained by its chain.

  Charon was silent, but gave the poet a meaningful look and patted his heavy purse as though to say, You’ve paid enough already.

  Perhaps eager to rid the dark realm of two living mortals, the ferryman plunged his pole at once into the water. They crossed the foul-smelling river quickly, and soon Orpheus felt the opposite quay beneath his feet.

  “Don’t!” gasped Eurydice as Orpheus nearly turned back to help her disembark from the lopsided ferry.

  The young poet shook himself, and gave an embarrassed – and startled – laugh.

  He was aching for another sight of her – and shocked to find how hard it might be to fulfill the simple, stark condition.

  Orpheus crept along the path, keeping his own progress slow, and reaching back often to take her hand.

  Even so, at times she fell behind, and the poet had to pause and listen carefully to catch the whisper of her footsteps. Reassured by her approaching, limping footfall, he would hurry ahead – only to stop and hold his breath as her progress was too far in the distance to make an audible sound. Perhaps she has lost the way, he thought several times, only to grow weak with relief as her steps made their way upward, closer and closer.

  She had many questions – about the well-being of her father, her broth
er, and all her many friends in the kingdom. Orpheus was delighted to tell her every detail as they journeyed upward, reassured that the mourning he described would soon be swept away by joyful life. When he got too far ahead once more, he called back to her and she answered, “I’m coming, Orpheus,” laughing breathlessly, as though her injury was a minor hindrance, nothing more.

  And as she climbed upward, she was growing stronger – the poet could hear it in her voice and feel it in the increasingly assertive grasp she offered him.

  It was true that the route was more rough and even more dangerous than Orpheus had recalled, the upward effort more difficult than the descent. For this reason the poet walked increasingly well ahead at times, sweeping sharp pebbles from the path with eager hands.

  The music of water, trickling down from above, reached his ears. The snaking roots of trees speared downward, through cracks in the rocks, and lichen splashed the stone walls. Just when Orpheus sniffed the first trace of daylight air, he stumbled, and put out a hand to the rocky wall to keep from falling to the stony floor.

  The trail crumbled, and broke away beneath his feet, the rocky shelf falling off into the dark. But only at the sound of Eurydice’s warning gasp did the poet realize that he had once again nearly turned back.

  “It isn’t far now,” he said, his voice broken with anguish at the fatal blunder he had almost committed.

  Not far – his pulse hammered out the message.

  We are almost there.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  At last Orpheus stood beside the hard-gushing stream where Biton had slipped during the descent – it seemed so long ago.

  “Wait, Eurydice,” he cautioned her without turning back. “I’ll make sure the footing is sound.”

  He stepped into the numbing water, alarmed at the loose stones that quaked and churned, nearly causing him to fall.

  He struggled through the icy torrent.

  And then he waited as Eurydice paused at the far bank of the stream. He continued to linger where he was, turned resolutely away from her, as she haltingly waded forward. He heard her shudder at the cold, and sensed her reaching for his hand.

  He continued to turn deliberately away from her, and at the same time he reached back. He stretched his hand all the way, as far as he could, praying that soon he would feel her touch.

  It did not come.

  She’s fallen.

  She’s helpless.

  Surely, he thought, that splashing is the sound of her trying to keep from drowning. Just one look, he thought. An instant glimpse would not really count against me – would it?

  Of course not. I’ll take one quick glance, nothing more.

  He got ready to take just one peek Just one, to prevent her from drowning.

  Eurydice screamed.

  She had been balancing, step by step, across the uneven streambed, and making good progress – but slow. Her injury no longer hurt at all, and she was filled with ever-increasing hope. Wasn’t that vague glow from far above the promise of daylight?

  She was more than halfway across the rushing water when Orpheus turned back and met her eyes.

  Her lungs shrank again, and her blood ceased to pulse.

  Her heart contracted to a cold fist in her breast and her cry became a rattle. All the life that had returned to her body, giving it weight and color, ebbed away in moments, sinews dissolving, bone turning to smoke, a living woman becoming a shade again, and dissolving as she silently shrilled his name.

  6

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Biton found Orpheus in the sunlight the next day, sitting on the shore.

  The youth led a sure-footed donkey burdened with ripe dates and sesame cakes, red wine and fresh-baked loaves – the makings of a welcome feast for Orpheus and his rescued bride.

  The poet spoke no word, and gave no sign of hearing Biton’s questions. The youthful servant could only spread a blanket, prepare a meal, and taste some of it encouragingly. And then, when his master made no move to eat, Biton packed the rest of it away.

  The young servant could not imagine what his master had seen or suffered. Biton knew it was a selfish, small thing to take delight in, but he was glad to have his master back safe.

  That was enough to make Biton thankful, but as the days went on, the servant grew increasingly concerned for the princely poet.

  Biton had observed his master’s deep mourning before, but nothing like this. The poet was not bereaved so much as void, lost to nearly every sound and sight around him. For days Orpheus did not eat, and he said nothing, watching the waves break and the foam sink into the rocky shore.

  Biton held a cup of weak wine to his master’s lips, and the poet – his face a silent mask of sorrow – took in just enough to stay alive. His lyre rested against a stone untouched as Orpheus watched the round sun set and the stars rise. How many days were spent like this Biton would never be able to guess, but it was at dawn when at last he saw his master standing, letting the salt water lap at his ankles.

  Orpheus gestured out to sea, indicating a vessel beyond the waves, drawing in its sail.

  Biton recognized the Actis even though her canvas was new and dazzling white. Red-haired Captain Idas waved from the bow.

  “We were worried about you,” called the seaman. “How are you faring?”

  The poet waded toward the ship, out into the easy surf, leaving the lyre of Apollo on the shore.

  Biton gave a cry of alarm. He hurried to rescue the instrument from the sand. It remained heavy and silent in the youth’s grasp as he carried it out to the newly painted vessel and her friendly crew.

  Days later the Actis delivered the poet and his servant to the island of Delos, a wooded, prosperous island with a wide, shallow harbor of industrious net weavers and sturdy fishing vessels.

  Biton and the captain selected the destination. Orpheus had said nothing regarding where he wished to journey, neither to the captain nor to any of the crew, and Biton could offer little to enlighten them.

  “The little isle is a sunny place, with a balmy wind,” Captain Idas suggested. “And the priests of the famous temple of Apollo there will be sure to honor your master.”

  The poet took no interest in the smiles of the fisherfolk, however, nor the delegation of white-haired temple priests bringing fig cakes and berry wine – a specialty of the island – to express their welcome to the poet.

  “My master is bereaved,” explained Biton simply.

  Every time a request arrived for the renowned singer to join the villagers in a celebration of a recent birth, or to sing a song of blessing for a departing fishing fleet, the answer was the same.

  Every day Biton made sure that his master’s tunic was fresh, and his hair groomed. As the weeks passed, however, the servant was increasingly lonely for stories or poems – for any sort of conversation at all. And Biton felt curious, too – altogether too curious to keep silent much longer.

  What had happened across the black river Styx, he wondered, in the palace of Hades?

  One evening Biton cut a finger on the scales of a large red fish, a gift from the villagers. The scaly prize was nearly as big as Biton himself, and the servant had been cleaning the giant, when blood welled on his finger.

  To his surprise, Orpheus was at his side in an instant, after a month of stony torpor, dabbing at the injury with a bit of linen.

  “Be careful, Biton,” said Orpheus, wrapping the finger with a bandage, the first words he had uttered in an age.

  The poet dressed Biton’s cut with care the next morning, talking haltingly all the while, telling of his journey to Hades’ palace.

  “Two times, Biton,” he said, anguish in his voice, “my beautiful Eurydice was taken from me.”

  The poet would say nothing more.

  “Sing me a song about her,” suggested Biton, tears in his own eyes. “Make up a poem about lovely Eurydice, master. Please, to ease our sorrow – both yours and mine.”

  But Orpheus turned away from the sight of his lyre.<
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  The thought of poetry was so much long-cold ash to him, and the memory of song was bitter. Orpheus did not foresee his hands ever plucking music again, and could not imagine spinning a verse as long as he might live.

  Immortal Hades knew that I would turn back, thought Orpheus bitterly. And so did the lovely Queen Persephone.

  The condition set forth by her enigmatic husband was little more than a snare, sure to trap Eurydice, and send me into daylight alone.

  TWENTY-NINE

  When the sun was high one late-summer day, a visitor arrived.

  He was a priest from the temple of Apollo, a now familiar, ruddy-featured man. He was in a hurry, sweating and breathing hard, and this time brought a goatskin of berry wine and a woven sack of fresh, sun-bright apples.

  He ducked into the shadowy entryway of Orpheus’s dwelling, and explained to Biton. “The villagers have a heartfelt request,” said the priest, “for your master’s aid.”

  Biton sighed. “He never departs these walls.”

  “If you could bring yourself to ask, most earnestly, dear Biton,” said the good-natured priest, concern in his eyes. “There has been a fearsome accident, and we need the prince’s help.”

  Orpheus was sitting indoors, listening to the energetic bickering of the birds in the eaves over his head. It had been a long time since he had taken any pleasure in the sound, and just now, for the first time in months, he had to admit that the feathered creatures made a pretty chatter.

  “Young Norax, son of a tinsmith, fell off a roof, master,” Biton said, repeating the priest’s tidings to Orpheus. “He was trying to retrieve a ball from a courtyard game, and he slipped off and struck his head.” The servant did not know how else to put it. “The temple prayers have not been heeded by the gods, and now the village hopes your songs might awaken the boy to life.”

  “It troubles me to hear this news,” said Orpheus.