to their place of eternal rest. Why be burdened with dying thoughts when no one can ever go back?”
“Ever?”
“No. Never.”
And Chloe had almost died.
Shayne puts his arm around me, and I lean against him because his presence makes me never want to be anywhere else. I push the sorrows of the dead from my mind.
But then I hear Charon clear his throat.
Shayne turns back and looks. “Do you have something to say, Charon?”
I swivel around also so I can see him there in the back of the boat, poling us across.
“It just seems you may want to explain.” And then Charon looks at Shayne, and a lazy smirk covers his big, weathered face.
“Explain? What?” I ask.
Charon raises an eyebrow. “The exceptions. I just think they should be mentioned.”
“Charon. My rule follower.”
I look at Shayne, waiting, knowing he’ll go on.
He puts up his hands. “Every rule has exceptions. It’s the way of the world. One or two exceptions do not mean people can come back from the dead.” Shayne’s eyes blacken, and I see the red flashes. “People cannot leave Hell. That is the rule. But of course, as Charon has been so kind as to point out, there have been a couple exceptions over time.” He looks back at Charon. “A long time. And we never make a habit of it. And there are always consequences.”
I begin to ask the question I’ve been thinking, but the words won’t come out. I think it’s because I’m not sure I want to hear the answer.
“What?” Shayne tilts his head.
I shake my head. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”
But he persists. “Tell me.”
I take a deep breath and force the words out, realizing even as I say them I will be in the Underworld forever. Even if I haven’t died, I will remain here. No one leaves. And the thought hardly fazes me except I’ll have to leave Chloe. “Am I dead instead of Chloe? Will I be able to leave?”
Shayne surprises me. I figure he’d break it to me gently. But he starts laughing. “Do you want to leave?”
I glance back again at Charon who’s also smiling. “Maybe,” I say.
Shayne stops laughing. “Maybe.” He licks his lips and squeezes my hand. “Well then maybe you can leave. Unless we decide to keep you here forever.”
I’m not sure I’d mind. Anywhere forever with Shayne sounds like paradise. But I think of Chloe. How close she came to dying. And Shayne had saved her.
“But why Chloe?”
“It was her time.”
“No!” I push his arm off my shoulder and turn toward him. “It was not her time.”
He meets my gaze. Again, I see the red flashes in the brown of his eyes; they’ve started back up. Fire behind the darkness of Hell. “Yes. It was. Fate told you so herself.”
“Tanni? So she is real?”
Shayne nods.
“But you saved her.”
He nods and glances back at Charon. I look back, and Charon turns away. He’s avoiding the conversation.
Shayne’s voice is quiet. “I know.”
He did save her. “So what happens now? What if I choose to have Chloe live?” Which I know I will. It’s not even a choice.
“It will be an exception,” Shayne says.
What would Chloe’s sorrow have been had she died? What would she have left for the monsters to devour?
Shayne pulls me back toward him, erasing the distance I’ve put between us. “Just give the Underworld a chance, Piper. Letting Chloe die may be the better choice.”
“I doubt it.”
Shayne cocks his head. “Maybe so. But try to be open-minded.”
There’s a magnetic ball in the pit of my stomach drawing me to the Underworld. I want to see it and I want to be with Shayne. But as I sit there, something else about mythology doesn’t settle. Something I’m not sure I want to ask about or even face. Everything I know about the Underworld has made one thing clear. Hades is married to Persephone. And they rule the Underworld together.
I open my mouth, but I’m not sure how to bring it up.
“What?” Shayne says.
“It’s nothing,” I say.
“No really,” he says. “You were going to say something.”
I let out a long breath and finally let the question come. “I’ve studied mythology in school. I always thought…”
“She’s gone,” he says. “She’s gone and she’s not coming back.”
And I don’t know how to respond because whatever happened, it’s obvious he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I was, too,” he says. “But I’ve moved on.”
With the interest he’s showing in me, I have to believe he’s telling the truth. I decide I won’t question him anymore and risk him changing his mind. Maybe he’s left his sorrows here in the river, too. I settle against him and watch the feasting of the monsters, and push Shayne’s past romances out of my mind.
We travel from the dark cavern and then through a swamp so hazy and gray I can’t see the front of the boat. The haze dissipates, and we’re out into the middle of an ocean with a sky overhead that sparkles like a crystal. Two suns pound down from above, but unlike my Earth, the heat they generate finds that perfect in between space of warmth and cool. It’s like what my mom told me spring used to be like, back before the Global Heating Crisis started. She’d said autumn was a season of dying and winter brought horrible temperatures so cold people froze to death, but that each spring, life returned to the earth.
I don’t realize we’re approaching the far shore until clouds form in the crystal sky and the monsters in the water diminish. The voices weaken, as if no sorrow is permitted to reach the banks. And then I see the trees and feel the humidity. Limbs twist over the water, dripping below, and as we pass under the weeping willows, droplets rain down on me, falling in my thick hair. Far above, crows call out, talking amongst themselves, jumping from branch to branch. And when I see the cerulean blue sky complete with clouds, I know we’re no longer in a cavern but in some other world entirely.
Shayne jumps out first when the boat pushes its way through the reeds and cattails and hits up against the dock. He grabs the rope and loops it around a post. Above him, the canopy of trees holds back the light from the suns of Hell, and shadows play on the hard wooden surface. Then Shayne extends his hand toward me, and I grab it, letting him help me out.
Charon flips the gold coin which Shayne catches high in its arc. “I can’t take your money,” Charon says.
Shayne laughs and puts the coin back in his pocket. “I know.” And their exchange makes me wonder if Charon is like a father to Shayne.
“You’re going back already?” I ask.
“My work is never done. And when I say never, I do mean never.” Charon laughs, and I imagine him crossing the river thousands of times each day. The same routine over and over again.
The image of the gold coin flashes in my mind. “You must make a lot of money.”
“Not as much as you might think,” Charon says.
“Nobody buries people with money anymore,” Shayne says. “We’ve had to start a donation fund within the assembly of gods.”
