Ever since the ferryman had collared her, she’d felt disconnected from her body, as though her soul had been imprisoned in an unfamiliar cage of flesh and bone, heavy and thick as clay.
As they left the grove behind, her toes sank into blacksand. They trudged on until the rush of the river roared beyond the dark ground and there, waiting on the shore, was the barge.
Danae stiffened, her feet digging into the grains as Charon, the ferryman, stepped from the vessel, his glowing staff in his hand.
Then the shades let go of her. She was frozen with indecision, with no voice to guide her. After what the ferryman had done to her, her instinct was to run, but going with Charon might be her only hope of finding Alea.
A shade to her left began to sign, its shimmering hands distorting the air. Charon nodded, then his hood twitched towards her. She wondered how the shades could understand one another; perhaps their skin was more clearly visible to their crimson eyes than hers.
She swallowed and took a step forward, then another. When she reached the shore, Charon gestured to the barge and held it steady for her to step onto. She glanced back at the ghostly grove. The shades had already vanished into the gloom. Clenching her fists to prevent her hands from trembling, she stepped onto the vessel. The planks were cold and slippery beneath her feet. The boat bobbed as the ferryman climbed on after her. She could still feel the imprint of his fist against her temple. The skin around her swollen eye was painfully tender. She knew that if she had a mirror, she would look as unrecognizable as she felt.
Danae lowered herself onto the little bench at the far end, eyeing Charon as he drove his staff into the river and steered them out into the current of the Styx.
‘What does your master want with me?’
Nothing but rushing water answered her, echoing off the rock ceiling high above.
‘Where are the dead?’
The shade continued to punt the barge along the river as though he were just a spoke in an ever-turning wheel. She knew he could understand her – he was able to take orders from his master well enough – but perhaps he did not have the power of human speech.
As they continued, the Styx swelled around the vessel, fed by tributaries trickling like glistening veins from cracks in the rock. The banks of sand became wider, until it seemed like the barge travelled through the heart of a black desert. She looked down at her feet and the obsidian grains trapped between her toes. She was reminded of the oracle at Delphi, and the dust that had covered the chamber once she destroyed the omphalos stone that lay inside a crevasse in the depths of Apollo’s temple. Back then, she’d journeyed to the sacred city believing she was cursed. She’d had no idea how powerful she was.
She could not shake the sensation that she was dreaming, despite the stale, cold air that raised the hairs on her skin. The Underworld was so vast, she struggled to comprehend that the world above managed to exist without collapsing into the cavernous kingdom beneath it. Without daylight or the familiar constellations to guide her, she could not orient herself in time or space.
At some point she must have fallen asleep. Her head jolted from her chest as the vessel rocked, and she opened her eyes to see Charon dragging the barge onto the shore. Once the boat was free of the water, he stood to the side, staff in hand. For a breath they both looked at each other, then the ferryman turned and began to stride up the side of a vast dune. Her legs clumsy from disuse, Danae staggered after him.
Soon, her body ached with the effort of wading through the fine sand. The desert rolled around them; jet wavesfrozen in time. There was no wind here, no breath of relief. The footprints they left behind would linger, perhaps for ever. Despite her mounting exhaustion, Charon did not slow, did not seem to grow weary at all, continuing to trudge with his staff held aloft. After a while she no longer noticed the ferryman, her gaze fixed on the shining crystal bobbing at the tip of his staff. At one point the little sphere of light moved so far ahead she was no longer caught inside the ring of its glow. She began to see things in the periphery of her vision, eyes staring at her from the darkness. She remembered what Hades had said, that she must stay close to the ferryman for her own safety. She forced her aching legs to move faster.
They might have been walking for hours, or days, when the ferryman abruptly came to a halt. Danae sagged behind him, falling on all fours and burying her hands in the grains, her back heaving as she sucked in air.
A gloved hand appeared in front of her face holding a waterskin. She grabbed it, hurrying to remove the stopper and gulp down the sweet water. It spilled over her chin, dribbling down her front, but she did not care, only relinquishing the skin when Charon tugged it from her fingers. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, watching him like a wolf watches a lion.
The shade delved into the depths of his cloak and drew out something wrapped in cloth. He proffered it to her.
She took it and peeled back the material to find two pieces of flatbread. She raised them to her nose and sniffed. The bread was stuffed with olives. Her insides twisted, nauseated with only water bloating her stomach. It would do her no good for her body to fail before she found the Asphodel Meadows.
Her weak, powerless body.
She fell upon the bread, almost choking as she swallowed half-chewed mouthfuls.
When only crumbs remained, Charon whipped the cloth from her hands and continued to walk. Danae groaned, heaved herself to her feet and followed him.
She tried to count the peaks of the dunes they traversed but gave up somewhere in the eighties. She began to wonder if they were walking in circles, the hills of sand looked so similar. Her mother had told her a story of King Ixion, who had been most honoured amongst mortals and invited to Olympus to dine with the gods. His pride was so swollen at the prospect of walking amongst the Twelve, he made it known that he lusted after Hera, the Queen of Heaven, and intended to fulfil his desire. As punishment for his hubris, Zeus strapped him to a burning wheel, forever condemned to spin through Tartarus, the skin melting from his flesh for eternity.
Perhaps she had died of exhaustion, and her torment was to believe herself alive, endlessly trudging towards a destination she would never reach, the faint flicker of hope that she might see her sister again as painful as a sea of ravaging flames.
She stopped walking.
Her feet no longer stood on sand but on earth. It was rippled, like a parched seabed. Ahead of her was a vast plain of ochre soil, covered by a film of mist. Sparse clutches of pale plants protruded through the fog, reaching the height of her knee. They were tall and spindly, their colour almost entirely faded, like a painted amphora left too long in the sun. A coronet of delicate flowers clustered atop their stems. White touched with the palest blush.
Movement caught her eye, and she looked to her right to see a herd of roaming cattle, pausing occasionally to chewon the plants. As they moved closer, she realized that they were not cows at all. Their bodies appeared bovine, but their heads were those of red deer. Some were even crowned with twisted horns.
‘Which realm is this?’ she called after the ferryman.
Silence.
She didn’t know why she bothered to ask.
