Something about the strange music called out to her. Compelled, she took off down the right-hand tunnel, following the song as the roots hummed louder and louder.
At the end of the passage she came to an oak door, half hidden in the shadow of an alcove. She tried the handle. It was open.
She stepped through it and found herself at the bottom of a staircase. The walls were cracked and the steps roughly hewn, wispy lengths of roots prising through the gaps like strands of hair, vibrating with the Thracian tune.
Another door waited at the crest of the stairs, twisted with more of the pulsing tendrils. Danae slowed as she approached, her heart hammering as the hum of the song grew louder. She went to turn the bronze handle, but the door opened of its own accord.
The room was devoid of furniture or belongings of any kind. Like an ancient structure left to the ravages of time, the dark stone was ruptured with roots, across the floor, walls and ceiling. And all of them, however large or small, led towards the same central point.
Danae’s mouth fell slack as she stared at the far wall.
It was difficult to determine where the roots ended and the woman began. She hung above the ground, her limbs held flush to the wall by a web of tendrils. They even wound around her tawny locks, splaying them against the stone like she was floating underwater. Her skin was deathly white, and through a binding of roots, the iron ring of a collar like Danae’s was visible around her neck. But the tendrils were not just holding her in place, they were part of her. Like veins that had escaped her body, tiny roots pierced the skin of her wrists and ankles. They burrowed their way intoevery crevice; her ears, her nostrils, her mouth. And above her heart, twig-like branches sprouted from her chest, their bark decorated with pale leaves and delicate blossom.
This must be the Queen of the Underworld. Persephone.
Danae’s throat thickened as images whirled through her mind. The young priestess who had dressed as Persephone for the Thesmophoria back on Naxos, her white dress fluttering, bright eyes gleaming as her feet pounded the earth, dancing with another priestess dressed as her mother, Demeter. In the tale Danae had been told, Persephone was stolen away to the Underworld by a lustful Hades, allowed only to return to the world above for six months of the year. But the woman before her looked as though she had not seen daylight in centuries.
Persephone’s lips were parted, moving as though singing the words to the song the roots hummed, her eyes rolled back in her head.
Hades must have done this to Persephone; mutilated her just like the shades. Danae could see it would be fruitless to try and extract the goddess from the roots. She and the tendrils were one.
Behind Danae, the door crashed open, and Charon ran into the room.
The last line of music settled in the air, and Persephone’s eyes spun back to reveal irises of milky white surrounding ink-black pupils.
‘You brought the lark to my gate.’ Her voice was thin and strangled as though there were roots wound around her vocal cords.
‘It was you singing.’ Danae stared at the web of roots splaying out from the goddess like lace-woven wings. She had suspected the tendrils had a higher intelligence; she never dreamed it was Persephone who was controlling them. That they were part of the goddess.
‘Your companion’s song reminded me of sunlight, and birdsong, and the grass beneath my feet. I had forgotten, but I was glad to remember.’
‘His name was Orpheus. He’s dead.’
‘Ah … they all perish in the end. All my little pets.’ Persephone blinked. ‘Willyousing for me, like the lark did?’
Charon grabbed Danae’s shoulder, pulling her back.
The goddess let out a strangled cry. ‘I did not bid you leave! I will have you caged, little bird.’
Little bird.Little Titan.
Danae looked at the ferryman, eyes sweeping over the ring of jangling keys hooked into his belt, and the knife sheathed beside them.
She reached for the blade. Charon did not stop her.
Danae gripped the knife, the whites of her knuckles pressing through her skin as she turned and walked towards Persephone.
She wanted to take something from Hades. Just like Alea, Arius, Manto and her horse’s namesake, Hylas, had been taken from her. In that moment, she did not see a woman, only a false god, kin to those who had destroyed her family.
Danae reached up and slashed Persephone’s thigh in a place she knew death would follow moments later.
Blood sluiced down the wall, and a great surge of light ran through the network of roots as the goddess’s threads returned to the tapestry of life. Persephone gasped, the roots across her lips trembling, then the tendrils went dark.
Danae was still as the blood pooled across the floor. Only when Charon once more grabbed hold of her arm and tugged her towards the door did she allow herself to be moved.
She had taken lives before in the heat of battle. The heady rush of fighting for her own skin had never left much space to contemplate the consequences of her actions. This shouldbe different. She had extinguished a life knowing it would cease to exist. She had killed the Queen of the Underworld. But she felt nothing.
They continued on through the passage at the bottom of the stairs, Danae’s blood-stained feet slapping against the floor, their way lit only by Charon’s staff.
