Awaken

imbalance in the Underworld. I have my suspicions about what caused it, but more important, I do believe it caused an opportunity for the death god, Thanatos, to capture John’s soul. The question is, how are we going to save him?”

14

The Guide and I into that hidden road

Now entered, to return to the bright world …

DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto XXXIV

There are other questions, of course,” Mr. Smith was saying as he stood with his back to me, scanning his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. “And other pressing concerns. How are we going to help all those poor souls you left behind in the Underworld? And how are we going to defeat the Furies and return the Fates, and thus restore the balance so that this fair isle doesn’t turn into a flaming ball of magma? But,” he added lightly, “I believe once we’ve located and recovered John, those other things will be a bit easier to manage. I hope so, anyway. All of the bridges are shut down due to the storm, so it’s far too late to evacuate.”

I was barely listening to him. Instead, I was glancing around the room, my mind spinning. Mr. Graves, the man of science, had been right? There was a Thanatos keeping John’s soul from reentering his body, holding him captive between life and death?

Had John really caused that lightning bolt to strike that tree and kill Mr. Mueller? If he had, that meant he’d been with me the whole time. Was he here with me now? If so, why couldn’t I feel him? All I could hear was the insistent howl of the wind outside, sucking and banging the shutters against the windows, a strange contrast to the cheerful music playing down the hall.

What if it was true, and John had become some kind of guardian angel to me? In a way, the thought was oddly comforting. But I didn’t want a guardian angel. What good would that do me? Guardian angels couldn’t hold you in their strong arms and tell you everything was going to be all right. They couldn’t eat breakfast with you, or tease you, or tell you that you looked beautiful even when your hair was piled on top of your head because you’d just washed your face and you knew you didn’t look beautiful at all.

I wanted John, the boy, not John, the angel. I wanted him whole, back the way he was, not some stupid angel ….

John? I asked with my mind, looking cautiously around the room. Are you here? If you’re here, give me a sign.

“Ah,” Mr. Smith said, after having stepped onto a small library ladder to find the tome he’d apparently been looking for. “Here it is.”

He walked over to a wide mahogany desk and opened the book to the appropriate page. I rose from my chair to take a look.

On the page before me was a photo of an ancient Greek statue. It showed a winged boy mounted on a galloping horse, swinging a sword over his head.

Well, some of the legs of the horse were galloping. The others had fallen off in an earthquake or something. So had the boy’s face, and most of his wings.

“Thanatos,” Mr. Smith said. “The Greek personification of death.”

I looked down at the photo. “He’s just a kid.”

“I suppose you could say that. The Romans did view him as a child of the dark night. It was said even the sun was afraid to shine upon him. But that kid, as you refer to him, destroyed whole armies with a single swipe of that sword. He killed without a thought to his victims. He was said to be without mercy, without repentance, and without a soul.”

“So in other words,” I said, “a typical teen boy.”

Mr. Smith frowned at me, then read aloud from the inscription beneath the photo. “Here’s what the poet Hesiod wrote in Theogony about Thanatos: ‘His spirit within him is pitiless as bronze: whomsoever of men he has once seized he holds fast. He is hateful even to the deathless gods.’”

“Because he was shut up in his room all day,” I said, “sexting and playing video games.”

Mr. Smith frowned. “They didn’t have video games in the years before Christ —”

“You know what I mean,” I said. Something about the statue bothered me. It reminded me of something or someone, but I couldn’t figure out who, especially since the form had no face. “If the gods were deathless, then how did he manage to kill John?”

Mr. Smith raised an eyebrow. “Miss Oliviera, I told you upon one of our very first meetings, John isn’t a god. He’s simply an unfortunate young man who was thrust into a position of great responsibility at a very young age —”

“How come there’s nothing about this Thanatos guy in the Hades and Persephone myth?” I interrupted. I already knew how great John was. I didn’t need to hear it.

“Because he doesn’t figure in it. He’s a minor player in Greek mythological literature, considered more a spirit than a deity. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, believed we all have a little Thanatos within us. He called it the death drive and claimed it’s what makes us engage in risky behaviors from time to time.”

I raised an eyebrow, remembering the way John had clung to the wheel of the ill-fated ship until the last minute. “That sounds like John. So how do I get him away from this Thanatos, once I figure out who he is? I’m guessing he wasn’t Mr. Mueller, or John would already be back.”

Mr. Smith shook his head and closed the book.

“I ought to have known, given our past conversations,” he said tiredly, “that you wouldn’t understand. You can’t literally engage Death in a fight to the death for the life of your boyfriend, Pierce.”

“Whatever, I get it that this Thanatos freak is probably a metaphor,” I said, beginning to pace the room. “But in case he’s not, I’ve already killed one guy tonight. What’s to keep me from killing another?”

Mr. Smith regarded me helplessly from behind his desk. “Because that is not who you are. I understand that with your teacher, you were acting in self-defense. But the entire reason John was so drawn to you is because you are the spring to his winter. You are the water to his fire. He is the storm. You are the sun that appears after the storm.”

I stopped pacing to stare at him. “Are you purposefully trying to make me throw up?”

“Miss Oliviera, please,” Mr. Smith said, opening his arms wide as if to say, Why are you blaming me for stating the obvious? “I know that to you I must seem sometimes like the silly old man who loves to talk about death deities, but give me some credit for having lived a bit longer than you and having seen a few more things. Yes, storms are damaging, but we need them because they clear away the bracken that prevents new flowers from having a chance to grow. And of course we need the sun to shine on those new flowers that without the storm might never have had a chance to bloom.”

Tears formed again in my eyes. “Stop it.”

“Now you’re the one who’s being silly,” Mr. Smith said. “It’s good to be the storm and be able to defend yourself and others when you have to, but it’s just as good to be the sun … maybe better.”

“I’m not the sun,” I said, reaching up to wipe my tears. “Or springtime, or water, or any of those things. I’ve been told on pretty good authority that I’m a kite with no strings, fueled by anger.”

“Of course you are,” Mr. Smith said, “when John isn’t around. I believe I mentioned that he wasn’t particularly enjoyable company before you came into his life. That’s why it would be nice to get the two of you back together. You really only function well as a pair.”

“Right,” I said in a not very steady voice. “So maybe we should concentrate on figuring out what’s happening in the Underworld.”

“What’s happening in the Underworld is fairly obvious,” Mr. Smith said, peeking inside my tote. My cell phone had begun to ring. “The goal of the Furies has always been to destroy the Underworld. And now that they’ve killed John — or believe they’ve done so, anyway — and crippled the transportation of souls, the only thing that stands in the way of their goal is you. Once you’re gone, there’ll be nothing left of the Isla Huesos Underworld, and your friend Mr. Graves’s prediction will come true: Pestilence will reign here on our once fair isle.”