him, at the edges of my thoughts. Amused, contemptuous. His disdain kindles my courage. I take the first step forward, walk past him. I know where I’m going, now. He can follow me.
It takes longer than I think it should to cross the white plain and draw close to the nearest door.
I am back in the penthouse apartment Aurora took me to. The room is empty and the chandeliers are unlit, the greasy candles melted into long strings of wax. Beyond the windows I see not the plain we crossed but the black ocean, the black sky of my dreams. It’s colder here than anywhere I’ve ever been. I draw my sleeves over my knuckles, but it’s no use. Nothing can keep out this chill. It slips between my ribs and down my throat. I shiver and tug at Raoul’s rosary. I’m starting to wonder if I will spend the rest of my life in places that aren’t entirely real, and then I think about where I am and how the rest of my life may not be a very long time at all, and then I decide to think about something else. Ripley. Thomas the Rhymer.
The room is smaller than I remember from the party. One wall is windowless, painted white and lined with oil paintings in simple frames. I walk closer, unable to help myself. Security guards at museums hate me; I’m forever trying to touch the art. These are a series of murky oil landscapes all done in a similar style. Each one is populated with tiny figures, their faces rendered in perfect detail. A man rolling a boulder up a hill, his shoulders covered in gore, his face full of pain. A man tied down, mouth open in a scream, while vultures tear open his belly. A line of sad-faced women trying to carry water in sieves. And people I know, too. People who lived too fast and died badly. When I find the picture of Aurora’s father, I am not surprised. He’s in the garden of Aurora’s house, looking at something outside the frame of the painting. His face looks the same way it does in my memory. At the very edge of the picture, there’s a half-obscured figure in a dress that might be Maia. Or Aurora.
“This is fucked,” I say. I turn back to Minos, and then I see him. The tall pale man from the party, the one whose touch burned my skin. Minos’s boss. I can’t pretend anymore that I don’t know who he is, don’t know who the two people I love most in the world have been cutting bargains with. His ice-blue eyes are mocking. He’s standing by the windows on the far side of the room, as casual as if we were all at a cocktail party. Aurora lies crumpled at his feet.
“Come forward,” says the ice-eyed man. I can feel my shoulder burning where the thorns pierced my skin. I cross the room. Slow, slow steps. If Aurora is dead I don’t want to know yet.
But she isn’t: I can see that, when I’m standing in front of the god of hell. Faint rattle of breath in her throat, faint rise and fall of her chest. She’s so beautiful now she is transcendent, as though passing over from the realm of the living stripped her of any remaining imperfection. I am so filled with love for her I can hardly talk. “I came here for her,” I say.
“I know what you came here for,” he says. “What will you give me for her?” The terrible eyes are amused.
Once there was a musician who fell in love with a girl. When she died too young he followed her into darkness, played so beautifully that even the lord of death was moved.
But I am not the musician, and I am not the girl. I am only myself, muscle and bone, stubborn and jealous and sometimes too mean, selfish and in love. I am only all the things that make me, and the best of those is her. I have nothing to offer the god of hell, no sweet-voiced song to trade, no unearthly beauty, no rare and precious gift. I can’t charm animals or fight kings or sail a fleet of ships to a hundred monster-haunted islands, trick a Cyclops, make a goddess fall in love with me. I curl my hands into fists and stand there, helpless and out of luck. I don’t even win at board games.
Fine. Draw for them. That I can do. I sink to my haunches, take out my brushes and ink. My sketchbook. I turn to a blank page. Breathe in. Start to draw. I draw me and Aurora, the story of us. I draw us as little girls, clasping our bloody palms together and making promises about forever. I draw us in the pit, clothes sticking to our bodies, our faces jubilant, waiting for the next chord. I draw us in the woods, sleeping under a canopy of leaves. I draw the map we made on the walls of my room, the world we swore we’d find together. I draw the wretched mess of my own envy, draw the poison I let creep into my heart, draw how much I wanted her broken fairytale life, how much I wanted her perfect face, her endless charm. I draw us in her bathtub, laughing at each other. I draw Aurora as Ripley, battling aliens in the far reaches of space; I draw her as Aphrodite rising out of the ocean; I draw her as the mermaid Ondine singing mortals down to the deep. I draw her as I know her: capricious, fierce, lovely, beloved. I draw Raoul and Oscar Wilde, Raoul and the fish-stall boys, Raoul bringing me back to what matters over and over again. I draw what it cost me to leave Jack standing in that terrible room, draw how much I hope he’ll find what he’s looking for, the future bright and hopeful still. I draw a way out, a way through. Draw the light of his music moving through me, that impossible gift, the music that started all of this, that drew these old gods to us like cats batting mice for sport. I draw Cass and her tarot cards, counting out the ways to keep from saying sorry; Maia kicking aside the life raft and plunging into the deep. Both of them letting us go too far until we got to here. I draw as though I’m drawing for my life, for Aurora’s life, drawing us a way out of here, a way back to the world we lived in before, where everything was simpler and the only things that could hurt us were the things I already knew. I draw until my hands cramp into claws and my vision blurs and my fingers are black with ink. Sweat runs in stinging rivulets between my breasts. Aurora’s chest rises and falls. I draw for hours or days or months or years, I draw until time stops meaning anything at all. I draw until Minos bends down and gently takes the brushes from me. He stands and faces the ice-eyed man.
“Take her, then,” says the god of hell. I can see eternity in his bored blue eyes, all the dusty centuries that have passed while he waited in this room for something to happen. No wonder he likes to fuck with people. We’re the daytime soaps for him.
I don’t wait for them to change their minds. When I try to stand my legs buckle, and the pain in my knees makes me suck my breath in quick and sharp. Minos reaches out one bony hand but I shrug it away, struggle to my feet alone and stand there breathing hard until the room stops spinning.
“Aurora,” I say. “We have to go.” She doesn’t stir. Nobody said this was going to be a free ride, but I wish I had at least a couple of crafty fates on my side. I take a deep breath and pick Aurora up like I’m a newlywed carrying her across a threshold. One of her arms slung around my shoulder. Her white hair spilling down my back. She murmurs something and opens her eyes at last.
“Babycakes. You came.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say into Aurora’s cheek. I carry her out of that room with my own two hands, and I do not look back.
The ferryman is waiting where we left him, silent in his dark boat. I heave Aurora’s legs over the side, sit her in the front of the boat. Aurora slumps forward, and I climb over her. We sit like that, her nearly unconscious, me expectant, but the boat doesn’t move. I rack my mind for fairytale passwords, but everything I know is out of Grimm’s. “Open sesame” is probably a little
I don’t hear Minos, don’t see him crossing the plain. One minute he isn’t there and the next he is.
