by Mur Lafferty
“I thought we just left the Christian hell?” I asked Kazuko.
She shook her head. “Some faiths have many hells.”
“But where’s the fire?”
Daniel grimaced. “I think I know what’s going on. Things are kinda wonky here, too, huh? Satan dropping the ball, or losing power, or something?”
“How could Satan care for two separate hells?” I asked.
“When you were alive, were there not heads of corporations or even states that managed many smaller, separate places?” Kazuko asked. “England ruled India for years.”
I shrugged. Like the city of Dis, souls wandered around listlessly here, clearly content that they weren’t being tortured, but without enough energy to do anything creative or productive with their free time.
A woman sat in a crude wooden chair close to the edge of the pit, cradling her knees, crooning softly. Daniel made a small noise in his throat.
“He planned this. The fucker planned this.”
“Who planned what?” I asked.
His voice was high and frightened, like a startled bird. “God. Satan. I don’t know. Someone is screwing with me.”
“Daniel, what—”
I didn’t finish. He drew his sword, walked up to the woman. She never looked up from her crooning as Daniel cried out in rage and cut off her head.
#
I won’t lie and say that I was getting used to the violence that surrounded me in hell. It was losing its shock value, though. I tried to develop a sense of detachment, like a theological sociologist, to figure out what happens exactly when someone “dies” in hell. Where do they go?
Previously, of course, we just sent people to different places. From purgatory to hell. Hell to heaven. And now I tried to watch what was going to happen to this woman now that her head was lying several feet from her body.
Discovering the secret behind this was better than dealing with the raving mess that was Daniel. Kazuko actually stopped him – with her sword – from going and slicing up the remaining souls around the edge of the huge pit.
Daniel had gotten rather good with the katana – Odin’s knowledge, I supposed – but he was still no match for his bodyguard. She blocked his strike toward his next victim with her thin blade and directed it downward. Daniel cried out in anger, and she kicked him once in the belly. He folded and dropped to the ground, gasping.
She picked up the katana and wiped it off, then snatched the sheath from Daniel’s side and put the sword away, but not before I saw that it had begun to shimmer in her hands. It didn’t do that when Daniel held it.
Daniel finally got in enough air to sob, and he curled into a fetal position and wept.
I walked to him and leaned over.
“Was that your mom?”
He nodded.
I knelt by his side and placed my hand on his head, lightly stroking his hair.
As he sobbed, I scanned the souls around me. Down into the pit, more figures moved: hulking figures that lumbered and trudged in a most un-humanlike way- a most non-comforting way. Sure, the angels could have kicked our asses, but at least they were human-looking. These demons were something else.
Thankfully, they didn’t seem to be showing any sign of aggressive tendencies. Much like the fallen angels of Dis.
I looked at Kazuko who stood above us impassively. “We need to figure out what’s up with this hell. I mean, it’s broken like the last one. Can you make it work again?”
“Not until Daniel can function. Not until he heals. I can’t do it without him.”
That was more information than I’d had before. I tore my eyes from Daniel to focus on the small woman. “What do you mean?”
She smiled at me. “You should figure it out soon.”
Another figure caught my eye in the pit. It was far away, so I couldn’t be sure, but it looked as though it rose from the embers of the dying pit fire itself and began walking across the ashes toward us. I kept my eye on it. The demons around it paid it no mind, and when I was close enough to be sure, I nudged Daniel.
“I think you need to see this, Daniel.”
His voice was still thick with tears as he saw where I pointed. “What? Where did she come from? Why isn’t she dead?”
“Daniel, we’re in hell. There’s nowhere else to go. I guess if you kill her, she comes back to be punished again.” I glanced at Kazuko for affirmation and she nodded.
Daniel got to his feet and picked up the sword again. “Then I’ll do it again.”
I wasn’t sure how to handle this grief-stricken and violent part of him, but I figured the truth would be better than sugar-coating. “And again? And again? Until what? Are you going to stay here forever, her hell being your revenge and your hell being the fact that she’ll keep coming back?”
Tough love didn’t work. He rounded on me, sword drawn, and I leapt back. Without thinking, I drew my own and held it out, the way I had seen Kazuko do, to defend myself.
With flowing grace she stepped between us, carefully. “Stop. Put your weapons away. The pit of flames is nearly dead but still it has an effect on you two. If you die here, you can never leave.”
Daniel’s eyes were still raging as he sheathed his sword. I fumbled mine back onto my back. Kazuko sighed and stepped away, but not before I saw that my blade had nicked her hand.
Daniel turned his back to me and asked Kazuko, “Why are we here, then?”
“I do not know. That information is not mine. But you seem to have found something to benefit you in each of the hells you have visited.”
I thought that it looked pretty obvious as to why we were here, but didn’t say so.
Kazuko waited with her hand on Daniel’s sword arm as the figure approached, crooning to itself again. Her hair was greasy and wild, the same dark brown as Daniel’s. I could also see where he got his almost-black eyes.
There the similarities stopped. Her face was bloated and droopy, her back slumped, her dingy sweatpants stretched over her fat body. She looked like a poster girl for depression that we would have studied in health class.
Her eyes widened when she saw Daniel.
“Danny. My baby. Have you come for me? Did you come to take Mommy home?”
Daniel’s voice was rough as he choked out a laugh. “And why would I do that?”
Her face showed genuine shock. “Because. Because I’ve been in this terrible place for so long. I’ve been so lost. I missed you.” Her chin trembled.
“Did you miss her?”
“Who? Who could I miss more than you?”
“Megan, Mom. Do you miss Megan? Your daughter…?”
She smiled then, an innocent and lucid smile. “I always wanted a little girl. You were my joy, my son, but I wanted a daughter, too.”
Daniel took a deep, shaky sigh. “You had a daughter. A girl named Megan. She was four. You killed her, and when I tried to stop you, you cut me.”
I gasped as he held up his forearms. While Odin’s power had healed his scars, now they were fresh cuts again, weeping blood that sizzled when it hit the sooty ground.
“You were committed and died in the institution,” he continued. “That’s why you’re here in hell.”
“I had… a girl?”
“Yes, you had a girl; a little girl who did not understand why you hurt her.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know, Mom. She’s lost. I’m looking for her.”
“I’m coming, too.”
Daniel laughed, a hurt sound. “Mom, you can’t leave here. You’re in hell. You’re being punished for what you did.”
Her face lost the last of the confused, dreamy quality and I realized I finally saw who it was who had raised Daniel. Without whatever madness she had that had taken her daughter’s life, she looked like a normal person, someone who didn’t expect a cavalry to save her. Someone sane.
Then her eyes widened and she brought her hands to her mouth. “I remember.”
A small amount of tension left
Daniel’s shoulders. “Dad always told me that you were sick. I tried to forgive you. I really did. But…”
She shook her head. “Unforgivable.” She groped around and found the wooden chair we had found her in, toppled when Daniel had attacked her.
Daniel stared at her, fatigue and misery bowing his shoulders.
I went to his side. His eyes were closed, tears streaming from underneath. I touched his arm, and he closed his hand around mine. “I just wanted her to acknowledge what she had done, who she had hurt. That’s all.”
He squeezed my hand again and the air got much hotter. The embers stirred below, and fire snaked around the pit, filling it. I stepped back from the sudden glare and heat, but Daniel held my hand tighter, so I stayed.
Daniel’s mother looked up from her despair and looked at the fire pit. The demons crawled out, newly invigorated, and began pursuing the errant souls, striking them with weapons and driving them into the pit. She looked at Daniel once, with sad eyes, and walked to the edge of the pit. Flames licked up to her feet and the rubber on her dingy sneakers caught fire.
It wasn’t a graceful swan dive, but it was clearly surrendering to her fate, to her responsibility. She waved once to Daniel and was gone.
He leaned on me, and I half-carried him away from the searing heat. He seemed very light.
CHAPTER SEVEN
We walked until the glow of the pit was no longer on the dismal horizon, and that was a very long time. When Daniel was finally satisfied we were far enough away, he collapsed in exhaustion. I spread out our blankets, urged him onto one, and lay down beside him. He curled into a ball. I tentatively reached out to him and he shuddered under my touch.
I scooted closer and wrapped my arms around him, holding him tightly until he stopped shuddering.
I was dimly aware of Kazuko’s careful tending to her cut hand, and wondered why a shallow cut concerned her so much. I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it, as I was pretty emotionally spent myself.
I dozed on and off through the night, watching him sleep, nodding off, then watching him sleep some more. When the baleful sun illuminated the never-lifting haze, he finally opened his eyes. When he saw me watching him, he smiled. I relaxed a little at the calm in his face.
“You been watching all night?” he asked.
I nodded. “Mostly.”
“Why don’t you get some sleep now?”
I answered by closing my eyes and dropping off immediately. I dreamed that he stroked my hair as I slept.
#
I don’t think I slept long, but I woke up feeling refreshed. I lay alone on the blanket, the space beside me cold. Daniel sat and talked quietly with Kazuko away from where I’d slept. Disappointment was sharp on my tongue as I began packing up my blanket.
Daniel wrinkled his nose as we began walking. “Gah, what the hell is that smell?”
Kazuko’s thin nostrils constricted as she inhaled. “That is the river Styx.”
My stomach felt as if I had just eaten a bunch of ferrets whole. Ferrets on speed. Styx was the river to cross before you entered the Underworld, Hades’s realm. Greek hell.
The line to get to the ferry began before we could see the river. But when a girl in a flower-printed dress, wearing a thin, gem-lined circlet around her brow spied us, she ran over and shook my hand first, then Daniel’s, and lastly Kazuko’s. She then took my hand again and, without a word, dragged us to the front of the line. I stumbled after her, the indignant hollow eyes of the dead boring into my back.
No one, alive or dead, liked line-jumpers.
We went to the front of the line where the brackish water of Styx lapped lazily at the bank. Charon, the ferry master, had upgraded his boat since the picture I’d seen of him in my Greek mythology book – instead of a Venice-like gondola, his motorized ferry chugged idly as it waited for passengers, who came aboard slowly. A little ebony-haired boy onboard ran around and offered people water from a jug.
“The water of Lethe,” said Kazuko. “It makes them forget.”
“But I thought this was Styx,” Daniel said.
“All of the waters of Heaven and Hell run together eventually.”
The girl tapped her neck lightly, and we brought out our necklaces. They now resembled coins. She led us up the ramp to the boat and directly to Charon.
He squinted at our necklaces and grunted, turning back to his wheel. I thought he’d dismissed us, but the girl grinned broadly and scampered off the boat.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“We are welcome aboard,” Kazuko said.
“I’m surprised that hell honors Travelers too,” Daniel said.
“You are no regular Travelers,” Kazuko said.
“Yeah, so everyone keeps saying.”
I squinted across the water at the shore, barely in sight. “I had always assumed Styx was a narrow river and the ferry more symbolic than anything else.”
“It was, but as the number of souls passing through became more, the size of Underworld grew. Including the size of the river.”
Daniel stared across the way with me. He didn’t look at me when he spoke. “I’m sorry I attacked you at the fire pit.”
I shrugged uncomfortably. “It’s forgotten.”
He chuckled. “That’s unlikely. I just, well, I never intended to hurt you.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say.
The ferry chugged along, and when we reached the halfway point on the river, Daniel spoke again. “I’ve been meaning to ask: what’s with the sword? Where did you get it?”
“The backpack. Where do I get anything?” I told him about the basement in Dis, explaining the child suicides and how I freed them.
He groaned. “Now, I don’t get it. Every time I go into my bag, I barely get anything at all to help me. I needed a weapon, I got a pocket knife. Ragnarök itself was happening around me, and I got scissors. You are playing jump rope and you just run across a white sword in your bag while looking for a tissue.”
I laughed. “Maybe I just have more faith in my bag than you do.”
His eye widened. “Maybe you’re right.”
Charon’s ferry chugged along and I looked at all the souls surrounding me. In Greek folklore, most everyone went to the Underworld; only the heroic went to Elysium.
Elysium. Where I had met Hermes.
“You thinking about him?”
I looked down into the murky depths. “How can you tell?”
“He’s dead. We’re going to his underworld. Makes sense you’d think about him.”
“Where do the dead gods go, anyway?” I asked.
“Baldur went to Hel,” he said quietly, and this time I could tell the difference between the two words “Hel” and “hell.” “Izanami was also imprisoned in an underworld. I think they are subject to the same rules we are.”
I glanced at Kazuko, but she had nothing to add. She showed interest instead at the blade on my back.
“Will you show me your blade?” she asked.
I glanced around at the silent souls around us, none of whom paid us any attention. “Let’s wait till we’re off the boat. I don’t want to attract attention.”
She nodded. We approached the other side and the souls began shuffling forward. We stood aside as they left the boat.
Charon came up behind us. He spoke, his voice sounding as if it hadn’t been used in years. “They are not expecting you. This is to your benefit.”
My mouth dropped open in surprise, but Daniel took it in stride. “How did you know we were coming?”
“It is my job to know.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Can we, uh, do anything for you before we go? We didn’t really pay for our passage.”
He had already turned to shuffle back to his controls. “Come and see me again. When it’s all over.”
“I have no idea what that was all about,” I said as we disembarked.
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t get it either. What are we su
pposed to do? And who’s going to find out we’re here?”
“Hades is not a god who welcomes visitors,” Kazuko said. “We will have to be careful.”
The ferry deposited us at a pier on a riverbank made of black and red sand. We trudged through the hot sand and down a hill toward a rocky outcropping and the mouth of a large cave.
I stood still and closed my eyes, trying to reach out to sense the same pull that I consistently felt from the already-retrieved souls in my bag.
I inhaled sharply. They were here. Yes. There were a lot of them. Eyes still closed, I pointed.
“Great. That’s not foreboding at all,” Daniel said.
I opened my eyes and saw I pointed straight into the cave. The souls from the ferry were already making their dream-like trek that way as well. Nothing illuminated the cave, and as they entered, darkness swallowed them quickly.
“Daniel, this is hell. Stop being surprised when we get bad news.”
#
Before we went inside, I unsheathed my sword and held it out to Kazuko, but she held her hands up, refusing to touch it. She instead put her face close to the blade and moved her head parallel to it, inspecting every inch. She came to the white pommel and pointed.
“I didn’t think it existed. This is Metal Tiger; I heard legends about it when I studied t’ai chi. It presents itself to a powerful being in need.”
“Me? I’m not a powerful being,” I protested.
“Maybe you got it because everyone else already had a sword,” Daniel said. “How did you get it again?”
I glared at him briefly. “I told you. It was just there.”
“The Metal Tiger is strong - if it chooses to support you, it will serve you unfailingly. It can also decide you’re unworthy and just as easily slip from your grasp.” Kazuko glanced from the sword to me. “I would recommend not holding on too tightly.”
“I have no idea if you’re being metaphorical or not,” I muttered. I looked at the sword more closely. I could now see an etching of a leaping, shining tiger on the blade close to the hilt.
She shook her head. “Heroes always find the Metal Tiger, but they never own it. You cannot give it away; it chooses its own master.” She straightened. “That is what the legends say.”
