Page 127 of The Hymn to Dionysus

A wave of sadness rolled through me. I loved Helios, of course I did, but somewhere in another world, Dionysus was alone. This river might as well have been the ocean. There would be no crossing. I’d never be able to keep that vow I’d made to him so long ago on the sea. What a way to die, on a broken vow.

“Phaidros,” Helios said quietly. “I think that man is waiting to talk to you.”

Dionysus had been standing about twelve yards away all the while. He was holding a lamp, the kind miners have, the shade almost closed, but there was a crack of light inside. The light didn’t look like it belonged here. My heart swooped with something that felt like hope and dread at the same time. I jolted upright and across to him, which slung dust and strange cold crystals into the air, where they hung and winked, not falling.

“Please don’t say you let them hurt you—”

“No, I’m—alive, I’ll always be alive. This place isn’t mine. I can’t cross.”

On the river, the ferry was vanishing into silver fog, with its silent cargo of ghosts.

“This is my commander,” I said. Helios had come after me more slowly, not cautious exactly, but considered. It was obvious Dionysus wasn’t an ordinary person. I laughed for no reason except that it so strange and so fizzily wonderful to introduce them. “He saved you, once, when we were both very small.”

Dionysus bowed, even though witches don’t bow to anyone. “Then I owe you a debt, sir.”

Helios looked up at him for a long time. “No debt. You’re family.”

“Don’t . . . write off a debt from something like me so quickly—”

“You’re still family,” Helios cut him off, unmoved. He was watching him. “The river sings of you, I think.”

“Yes.” For the first time since I’d known him, Dionysus sounded nervous. I felt it too. I felt like I was introducing lightning to the sea, or something else with equal and opposite charge.

“Are you here to take him back?” Helios said, about me.

“I’m here to give him the choice,” Dionysus said. He hesitated, and tilted slightly to me. “But if you come with me now, you can never come back here again. You’ll be like me, forever. You can never cross the river; you can never forget. I think—there’s a lot you’d like to forget.” His eyes flickered to Helios, then the river.

I was paralysed. Helios had waited for ten years in this dark place. I couldn’t leave him alone now. But Dionysus had been alone for twenty generations, and there was no way—I could see it very clearly in this dead silver light—that he would do it for much longer. In the silence, there was singing. It was like Helios had said; it was the river. On the far shore, things chittered. I heard the creak of a ferry rope again.

“Well?” Helios said to me. “Off you sod.”

“What?” My voice cracked over it. “But—”

“You heard. I’m not taking you over this river.”

“But you waited—”

“So?” He gave me the strangest, clear-eyed look. “You promised to protect this boy once, but you didn’t. Do it now. Do not dishonour me, knight.”

“Sir,” Dionysus began, “if you think your duty—”

“Nobody asked you,” Helios told him with exactly the same authority he’d always had, the one that spoke to your nerves without having to go through your mind first, even though he barely reached Dionysus’s shoulder. It was glorious witchcraft: Dionysus flinched. “Now what have you done with my sister?”

Dionysus stood a little aside so that we could see past him.

Waiting among the shades at the shore, there was one so pale that she was barely there. She was just a shape sketched in the air, sometimes clear if the silver light fell right, sometimes almost gone. With her, there was a wisp that might just have been a boy, but only if I tipped my head just right. I didn’t think they could see each other.

“Goodbye, little knight,” Helios told me. He put his arms around us both, then gave us both a tiny push. “Look after each other.” And then he turned and walked away, to his sister and the ghost that might have been Pentheus, and he did not look back.

“You can still go with them,” Dionysus said to me. “He decided for you when you were a child. You need not let him decide now.”

I locked my arms around him. He felt more—there—than other things. He was still in time. The hours were moving for him, somewhere. He hugged me too, his cheek pressed against my hair. He was warm, even here. “Don’t be so bloody stupid.”

“I have to ask you three times,” he said, very soft. “There are laws, even here; especially here.” He touched his head to mine. “My lord, may I take you above?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You consent never to return here.”