“Everywhere I’m still holding the paper, it didn’t rot to hell.” I said the words out loud, hoping if Mathias were near he’d be somehow able to hear me. “Is that something I can actually do?” I looked around the room and back to what was left of the paper. “It really freaking sucks that I have to talk to myself all the damn time around here.”
I placed the pieces of the note on the desk, and as soon as I set them down, they began to shrivel and melt to dust. “Holy shit.” I bolted up in the chair, the back of my neck tingly hot and sharp. “I can keep things from turning to shit here?”It wasn’t just people.
I slammed my palms down on the pile of books. I opened each one, making sure to always keep one hand on the pages,and it worked. The edges frayed and flitted off, but the books mostly stayed whole, long enough for me to skim through the words and try to find answers.
Too bad none of the answers made much sense to me. It was all about Greek mythology.
There was a war of gods and Titans, Zeus battling his Titan parents for supremacy, and he won. The Titan Prometheus won favor with the Olympians and was allowed to stay on Olympus. Prometheus created mankindblah, blah, blah, and gave them gifts. Pandora, the first woman, was created by Prometheus and the gods. Prometheus then stole Olympus's heavenly fire and gave it to mankind. This angered Zeus, so Prometheus was chained to Mount Olympus and eternally tormented.
That’s harsh.
Then the establishment of the Greek civilization, where gods and goddesses started falling in love with mortals, producing a new line of offspring called demigods. There was Perseus, Odysseus, and Hercules. Perseus was known for slaying the gorgon Medusa and rescuing the princess Andromeda from being sacrificed to a sea monster. Hercules was made to perform a dozen impossible tasks, which he completed using his amazing strength and cunning. Hercules also freed the Titan Prometheus. Odysseus went on a long journey (Homer's The Odyssey—a book I totallyDNF), and came home safely after many adventures.
I found myself yawning, my eyelids getting heavy.
“How is any of this supposed to help me? Where are these so-called gods and goddesses? Why does Hemlock get to be here and no one else?” I closed the book, dropping my hands to my lap, and just like I thought, the book decayed instantly, withering into a pile of gray soot.
I ended up wandering aimlessly though the castle and into the cobbled stone streets of the town. I walked the edge of the gardens and counted the flowers that now grew up the side of the tower to what must have been the music room. There were eight, two more than I had counted the last time.
I just wasn’t sure yet what it meant.Did I do that with my music? Was I able to actually change things here?
It felt like hours passed. All I could think about was Mathias and his words. Even if this world was once full of gods and myths, what the hell did it all mean? What did it mean for Mathias and his brother Liam, and why was Hemlock the king of this place?
I walked the winding pathways that twisted through the town, through the dead trees that reached their spindly fingers to the ceiling of the underearth. I walked though the darkness into the black of the world until I saw through the edge of the mist and billowing fog that acted as the boundary line of this world to see the dark outline of docked ships and a strange horizon full of underground mountains capped with dark silvery snow.
When the bells chimed and Ravenswood’s ghosts filled the streets once more, I found myself in the middle of the town in a small square, standing before an elderly woman and a small crying child. The woman’s eyes were the color of spoiled milk and her clothes were smudged with grit and grime.
The young boy was no more than three or four and the older woman was pleading with him to find his way back somewhere. Laying next to him was a spilled basket of rotten apples and spoiled black leaves I could only guess could have once been a vegetable of some sort. “Get, boy. Get.” The woman was shooing him away and kicking at him with a boot so worn out her blackened toe poked through its tip.
Without thinking, I knelt next to the child and placed my hand on his shoulder to get his attention. I felt him stiffen instantly.
And for a brief moment, something seemed to change. The air around me pulsated and the feeling of darkness, just at my back, hovered over me.
Did anyone else feel it?
I looked back over my shoulder and watched a spreading blackness seep out across the area. A glimpse of a face, horrendous with unblinking crimson eyes, stared right at me. Deformed shadowy arms and hands reached out around me, tapered at the ends like sharp serrated knives, clawing their way over each stone and rock.
I thought I would scream, or my chest would explode with horror, but when I turned around to tell the little boy to run, his head was facing up to me and his smile was blinding. The woman watched me as well, neither of them seeing the monster creeping up behind us.
Suddenly the boy’s features changed, and his face became fuller, his cheeks coloring to a healthier glow. His eyes sparkled and his breath hitched like he’d just finished running a marathon.
“Raine! Raine, no don’t!” Mathias’s voice called out from one of the darkened alleyways. His form, still a bit translucent, came running at me. “Raine, stop.” He looked at the people surrounding us. Everyone, eyes wide, watching me give life to a boy who was long dead.
Heat exploded in my chest and I stood up quickly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I could just—” I tried to step away but my eyes caught something directly in front of me. Everyone followed my gaze until we all saw King Hemlock standing no more than five feet away from us. The look in his eyes was a vice around my chest, stealing my breath away.
At the corner of his lips a smile curled up, making the hairs at the nape of my neck tingle with warning.
“I’m sorry, I have to go,” I said to the boy, stepping away. As I did, I saw that everyone was kneeling, facing the king. I backed away farther, Hemlock’s eyes fixed on me, staring.
The darkness remained behind me, growling and spitting, visible to no one but me. Mathias was by my side immediately, grabbing my hands and pulling me back, deeper into the solace of the shadowy corners of this world.
I entwined my fingers with his and followed him quickly.
But I still felt it, not the dark red-eyed monster that called this world home, but Hemlock’s gaze, locked on my back as Mathias pulled me away. The sensation spread decay across the back of my neck and shoulders, making me yearn for a shower to scrub the filth off.
And then his voice grated at the shell of my ear, “I will deny you your death even when you beg me for it, child.”
I tried to cover my ears. The sound of his voice was white static and chaos in my head. “You will belong to me.”
