Abruptly, he halted. We had arrived at a low cavern set in the earth, its yawning mouth disappearing into darkness. It looked much like any of the other small caves that dotted this mountainous landscape, but something about this one gave me pause. The shadows beyond its low entrance were pitch-black, swallowing all light. I had the sense that if I tossed a pebble into the cave, it would make no sound.
Such places existed on the fringes of the world, in the oceans far beyond sight of land and in remote stony regions like this one. I knew where we were. My flesh itself knew; I found myself drawn inexorably to the mouth of the cave, the ultimate destination of all mortals.
‘We’re here,’ Cupid said, leonine tail flicking back and forth. ‘We’ve come to the cave of Taenarum. This is the gateway to the Underworld.’
13
Eros
I made Psyche tie a rope around her ankle before her descent, which caused her to laugh and wrinkle her nose at me. ‘Am I a Phoenician pearl diver, leaping into the Mediterranean?’ she asked playfully. ‘Will you drag me out by your teeth if I run into trouble?’
‘I will if I must,’ I replied, my tail lashing from side to side. There was an electric thrum in the air, a frisson of anxiety. Psyche was going where I could not follow.But mortals went into the Underworld and returned all the time, I told myself; there had been the hero Heracles, and the singer Orpheus, and even the wandering prince Theseus. Mortals knew all sorts of tricks for such things, and Psyche’s enthusiasm suggested she had matters well in hand. And if she did not, I would pull her out myself. Yet I could not shake the thought that I was forgetting something.
‘You worry too much for a god,’ Psyche remarked.
‘I worry exactly as much as I need to. Here, take this with you,’ I added, pawing a bowl free from the satchel. It was white and smooth and fitted perfectly into the palm of Psyche’s hand. ‘Use it to collect the water. Go as quickly as you can, and do not be alarmed if it is night when you return. Time moves differently in the land of the dead.’
Psyche took the bowl and paused, studying me expectantly with her deep brown eyes. She chewed her lip as she turned the bowl in her hands, as though waiting for me to say something. But what does one say before watching one’s spouse descend into the Underworld? What is the proper etiquette for such a situation?
‘Swift journeys,’ I said awkwardly.
Psyche nodded. ‘I’ll see you again before long.’
Psyche
I began my descent, clambering down over a scrabble of rocks until I reached the proper path leading into the darkness. Here at the edge of the Underworld I felt a chill, but I quickly dismissed it. I was a god’s wife and made this descent under divine protection; I had nothing to fear.
I entered the cave. The dirt was remarkably smooth under my feet, and the light from the living world soon vanished. But I was used to darkness and unafraid. The rope whispered behind me in the dust.
It was not long before I saw another light, duller and weaker than that of the living world. When I reached it, I marvelled at a place that shocked me with its strangeness. The Underworld.
I stood on a slight incline that sloped down to an empty road of hard-packed earth lined with cypresses – dry, desiccated things reaching up to a colourless sky. Beyond that was the arch of a small bridge, and then a vast forest of naked wintertime trees devoid of all leaves. The scene before me was painted all in black and grey, as though colour had been leached out of the world.
A heavy mist lay over the landscape. Neither the light of sun nor that of the moon could pierce its veil to reach to this infernal place. There was only an arching darkness that must be the underbelly of the earth or the ribcage of Tartarus, the Titan slain to make this hollow dwelling place for the dead.
Far beyond the forest, I saw a palace of white marble adorned with turrets, rising like needles to pierce the hollow sky. There was something defiant about that royal structure, springing up so abruptly from the dull landscape. It was a snub to the muted sensibilities of the mortal dead, who would never again be able to grasp anything as solid as those walls. This must be the dwelling place of the queen of the dead, Persephone, and her husband, Hades.
The low swells of other hills rose behind the palace. I knew some of their names – the Fields of Asphodel and the Isles of the Blessed, where the souls of heroes went. But many more were the nameless places where the pale shadows of the dead loitered for all eternity, the brief dreams that had been their lives growing ever more distant.
A thick black band encircled the palace. This must be the River Styx, across which the ferryman Charon delivered the newly dead. Other rivers meandered across the landscape like inky black veins. One of them must be Lethe, my goal.
I began to walk in that direction, but abruptly stopped short. It was as if I were a dog snapped to the end of its tether. I took a breath and steeled myself, pushing forward again, but some great weight blocked my path. I pressed harder until I felt a wrenching pop of release. I stumbled, feeling suddenly weightless.
I realized why when I looked back and saw my own body crumpled on the path, limbs askew. The fine white bowl Cupid had given me lay shattered on the ground.
14
Psyche
Cupid and I, each assuming the other had a plan, overlooked one important fact: Mortals who attempt thekatabasis, the Underworld descent, must bring an offering. Heracles gave his own blood, while Orpheus paid for his passage with a song. But I had come empty-handed, save for a bowl to take what had never been given, and now I paid the price.
My ghostly form could no longer feel the adrenaline rush that comes with shock, since I no longer had adrenal glands or a heart. All the same, shock is the best term for what I felt, staring at the discarded shell of my mortal body.
‘There’s no use in gawking,’ a harsh voice female said. ‘There’s no help for it now.’
I whirled. A woman – or what I took at first to be a woman – waited nearby. She was peculiar-looking, too striking to be truly beautiful. Her cheekbones flared outward like the face of a cat, with narrow almond-shaped eyes that gazed mistrustfully at me over a wide, flat nose. Her hair was a rich mane of black tendrils – braids, or so I thought at first, until the hair moved and tasted the air with forked tongues.
A jolt of recognition. I remembered Perseus’s shield in thehero’s room at the Mycenaean palace, and the face depicted on it. Medusa.
