After several paces he asked, ‘What’s her name?’
Danae hesitated before answering. ‘Alea.’
Her heart ached. She had not spoken her sister’s name aloud for a very long time. She hoped her family still talked of Alea; she could not bear the thought that her sister might be forgotten. Or remembered only as a whore who danced with the Maenads.
‘That’s a lovely name. It means “she of the sweet voice”, does it not?’
‘Yes,’ Danae whispered.
‘She’s lucky to have a sister like you.’
Danae could not bring herself to reply.
They trudged on, a pair of pounding hearts and echoing footsteps in the darkness.
After a while Orpheus squeezed her hand. ‘Can you hear that?’
They both grew still and Danae strained to listen. There were vibrations rumbling from somewhere far away: a low rhythmic humming.
‘Daeira, I think … it’s a song.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘It sounds just like an old Thracian tune my grandfather used to whistle.’
Danae’s pulse quickened. ‘Let’s follow it.’
As they felt their way towards the vibrations, the darkness seemed to fade from an inky black to a grey gloom. Then something shifted across her vision. She froze, imagining it was a shade, but then the movement came again. A pulse of white light up ahead.
‘Orpheus –’
‘I can see it.’
The quality of the air had changed too. It was ripe with a mildewy musk.
They stumbled towards the faint light like moths to a flame. After being in the dark for so long, when the bursts came Danae was forced to squint against the sudden brightness.
When they grew close enough to make out the source, it was revealed to be tiny pulses of light travelling along strands of hair-thin roots laced over the tunnel wall.
‘The music’s stopped,’ said Orpheus.
Danae did not care. They had found light. She reached out with her free hand and touched the rock between the strands. It was damp. Tentatively she prodded one of the strings. The light changed direction, darting from her touch back along the network of roots, like a ripple across a pool.
‘They’re beautiful,’ breathed Orpheus.
‘The wall’s moist. There must be water coming from somewhere. Perhaps we’re near the Styx.’
As they walked on, the roots thickened, and the beats of light became bright enough to make out the shape of the widening passage. Even so, she and Orpheus kept hold of each other’s hand. Soon, they found themselves clambering over twisting roots as thick as human limbs. Then, all of a sudden, the tunnel came to an abrupt end.
Ahead of them was a space so vast, it felt as though they had travelled to another world. For a moment Danae thoughtthey had somehow reached the surface, for far above their heads were lights that shone in the blackness like stars. But these heavens were not the ones she knew, their constellations as alien to her as the strange glowing roots.
Below this unfamiliar sky, the pulsing tendrils peeled away from the mouth of the passage, entwining over the rocky ground, leaving a clear pathway towards a pair of gigantic bronze doors at least forty feet high. On either side of these metallic gates, the roots knotted together, mounting into a tangled wall, so tall it was impossible to see what lay beyond.
‘This must be it.’ Orpheus let go of Danae’s hand and took a step towards the doors.
She grabbed his tunic and drew him back into the relative gloom of the passage. Then she crouched down, searching the ground. When her fingers found a loose stone, she hurled it into the middle of the pathway and waited.
Save the gentle throbbing of the roots, there was no movement. No shimmering distortions in the air.
