Such Sweet Sorrow (16 page)

“Did you say that?” Juliet looked to Hamlet and Romeo. “Did one of you speak?”

“Maybe it was him,” Hamlet suggested, looking up at the Fire Giant, who still raged impotently beside them.

A lump of magma had landed in the boiling river and turned to steaming rock. It was tricky work, but they managed to navigate it and cross to the other side, leaving the giant alone and howling.

“I need to rest,” Romeo said, sounding embarrassed to admit it.

Hamlet scanned the horizon. A single, sickly black tree rose from the dead ground. “Let’s take him there.”

“Ooh, look at them, just lying down where ever they please.” Another voice clucked disapprovingly. “It’s not even their tree.”

“Who is saying that?” If Juliet hadn’t heard it as well, Hamlet would have thought he’d gone mad. He looked up, to the two giant black birds perched in the gnarled branches above them.

One of the ravens twisted its head and clucked in disapproval. “Who else could have said it? We’re the only ones here.”

…

“
Excuse me, but did you just speak?” Juliet asked the bird, who tilted his head so far to one side it seemed it would fall off.

“As well as you can. Don’t look so surprised.” He nudged the raven beside him with one wing. “Did you hear the cheek of this one?”

“That’s the trouble with humans, ain’t it really?” The second raven clucked deep in his chest. “They’re always on some quest for deeper understanding, without ever taking the first step of simply assuming other creatures could be on the same level as them. From a metaphysical, purely mental and logical sense, that is.”

“I don’t think you two could be considered the average raven,” Hamlet observed. The only one of them, Juliet realized, who could handily ignore the fact that he was talking to a bird long enough to carry on a conversation.

“Ignore him.” The raven with the missing eye pecked at his companion. “He gets carried away. Human beings excite him.”

“Only because they’re fascinating,” the other raven put in. “It isn’t as though I have some bizarre obsession with spoons or bits of string, is it? I’m interested in these creatures that can think and feel and empathize with each other on a very primal, animal level, and who have shut that bit off so they can indulge their depraved lusts for flesh, murder, and greed. It’s brilliant!”

“Who are you?” Juliet couldn’t help her disbelieving laugh.

“Just a pair of birds,” said the other, imitating a perfect nonchalant whistle. “You know how birds are.”

“We know how the Afterjord is,” Hamlet said cautiously, still panting from the fight. “You’re either here as a test, or to tell us something, or to spy on us.”

“Or kill us,” Romeo suggested weakly.

“A big, strong thing like you?” the raven replied.

“Who are you?” Juliet asked again. “I don’t believe for a moment that you’re just a pair of birds who can coincidentally speak.”

“I can’t believe you don’t know who we are,” the first raven said, pointing his sharp beak in Hamlet’s direction. “You’ve got Viking blood in you. Doesn’t anyone teach you children history these days?”

“I’m not a child,” Hamlet responded evenly. “Am I to assume that you’re Odin’s ravens, then?”

“We have names! He doesn’t
own
us,” the second bird snapped. “I’m Munin. My less verbose but equally lovely friend here is Hugin.”

“I know your names.” Hamlet narrowed his eyes at them. “What are you doing
here
?”

“Oh, you know, just hanging about. Taking in the scenery,” Hugin offered unconvincingly.

Juliet’s patience had run out, but she held her tongue. Everywhere they turned in this place, they found unhelpful, horrible entities who wanted only to trick them or harm them.

“You don’t just take in the scenery. You’re spies,” Hamlet accused. “Who sent you to spy on us, if not Odin?”

“Why would Odin care about you?” Munin asked, tilting his head. “Your people don’t even follow the old ways anymore. Odin has moved on, he doesn’t need you. He’s not obsessed with you or anything.”

“Sounds a bit defensive, doesn’t he?” Romeo tried to laugh, but it came out a pained, dry chuckle.

“Please.” Juliet could take no more. “If you’re not here to help us, at the very least, do us no harm. We have come a long way, and we have even further to go.”

“We never said we weren’t here to help you,” Hugin pointed out. “We have an invitation. For you.”

The raven’s gaze fixed on Hamlet.

“Why me?” He walked closer to the branch the birds perched upon. “Why not all of us?”

“Because that one’s on death’s door, isn’t he?” Munin cawed, nodding in Romeo’s direction.

Juliet looked down at her beloved. He wasn’t on death’s door exactly, just a bit tired. Wasn’t he?

She knelt at his side. “Are you all right?”

“Well enough that two lice-ridden bags of feathers shouldn’t be pronouncing me dead already.” He was, Juliet realized, trying to be brave, but she saw the same fear in his eyes she’d seen the morning of his banishment from Verona.

Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low, as one dead in the bottom of a tomb.

A shiver raced down her spine.

“What’s the invitation?” Hamlet asked the ravens.

“Well, we can’t tell you, exactly,” Hugin replied. “We’re to bring you to a specific place, quick as we can. And you’re meant to come alone.”

“Where is this place?” Hamlet asked.

He couldn’t seriously be considering leaving them behind? After all they had been through? She’d thought for certain that the bitter argument between Romeo and Hamlet had ended with their defeat of the fiery monster. The prince had said he needed them…

He wouldn’t just run off now.

Juliet’s blood boiled at the very thought. When they’d been stranded together in the hall of mirrors, he’d seemed set on finding Romeo, as though Romeo meant something to him. She’d thought she’d begun to mean something to the prince, as well. Not in a romantic sense; her heart belonged to Romeo. But she’d thought she could count Hamlet as a friend, at least.

Hugin’s voice took on an ominous quality. A warning that Juliet feared Hamlet would not heed. “Can’t tell you that, either. Or who sent us. But he’s important, or was. And he wants to see you.”

Munin whistled and chirped, imitating a songbird. “Something about a key…”

“The second key?” Romeo’s gaze jerked up.

“Technically the third, if you’re going by order of distribution,” Hugin corrected him.

“If you want to return to the land of the living, you’ll come with us.” Munin’s tone left no room for argument.

“All right.” Hamlet squared his shoulders. “I’ll go.”

Chapter Fifteen

“
What did he say?” Romeo gasped, staggering forward. His eyes widened, then pinched shut.

“Romeo!” Juliet caught him.

“I’m all right. I can make it.” He fell more than sat on the hard ground and pulled his legs beneath him. “I just need a rest.”

“Good idea. You two rest, while we take this other one.” Hugin squawked, exasperated. “But we have to go now.”

“This place is timeless, so what’s the hurry?” Juliet demanded.

“It may be timeless here, but it isn’t in Midgard, is it?” Munin snapped.

“He’s right.” Hamlet felt the strangest chill at thought of going on without Romeo and Juliet. He’d only just admitted that he needed them, needed their help to get back to Midgard. He didn’t want to leave them now, but it wasn’t every day that the messengers of a legendary god summoned him.

Trying to exploit the obvious, Hamlet said, “He’s too sick to continue.”

“So you’ll just leave him behind?” Juliet snapped, a fierce light blazing in her eyes. “You’ll strand him here in the Afterjord?”

“He isn’t stranding me, because I’m not leaving. At least not without you, and we’ve already been told that’s impossible,” Romeo managed through clenched teeth. “This is nothing but a spell of exhaustion. I need only rest, and then I can continue.”

“It’s foolish of you to try.” It would hurt the Italian’s pride to say so, but Hamlet couldn’t let him endanger himself. “They want to take me, alone. I recognize this could be some type of trap, but we’ve been separated before. I’ll come back for you.”

“What if you can’t?” Juliet demanded. “You’ll just leave him here?”

“I’m staying here,” Romeo reminded her tersely. “I’m not sure why you can’t grasp that. If this is Hamlet’s way out, we should let him go.”

“I’m not leaving the Afterjord,” Hamlet protested patiently. “I’m going with these two, who have clearly been sent to us for some purpose. Then I’ll return.”

Romeo tried to stand, managed to get to one knee. “My only concern is for Juliet. We don’t know if I’ll recover here; if this place is timeless, what’s to say resting my body will do any good at all, even if I sleep for hours? If you can’t come back, if I die…What will happen to Juliet?”

“Objectively, nothing worse than what’s already happened to her…” Munin said, his voice dying off slowly as he jerked his glance over the three of them.

Lower, so that it was clearly intended for Hamlet’s ears only, Romeo said, “You saw what it was like, where she was. I don’t want her to go back to being…like that.”

Hamlet wanted to say that Romeo was being silly; any of them had the potential to end up in that place, or worse, after they died. It was an eventuality they couldn’t escape.

But he couldn’t say it. Somehow, it seemed…cruel?

It wasn’t that Hamlet didn’t care about other people’s feelings. He just rarely had the presence of mind to act as though he did. That had gotten him into trouble, indeed. They really thought he would abandon them. And why shouldn’t they? He’d given them no reason to think otherwise.

Had he not suspected the very same act from the two of them?

Now, though, they all stood to lose from Juliet’s insistence that they continue on together.

He could not please both of his companions at once. Juliet wished for him to stay, Romeo wanted him to go. The lure of what might await at the end of whatever twisted path Odin’s ravens would lead him on was too tantalizing to deny.

He stooped beside Romeo. “I am not going to abandon her. You have my vow, on my father’s crown, that I will return, and you will help me out of here. I have faith that you are strong enough to aid me.”

Romeo was defeated. By kindness, Hamlet did not doubt. If he had condescended to Romeo, if he had shouted or tried to impress his royal status over him, the outcome would have been much different.

Hamlet looked up to Juliet. “Stay with him, give him some time to rest. I’ll go on ahead with Muggins and Crumbles here—”

“Crumbles indeed!” Munin squawked.

“—and see whatever it is they want to show us. Then I’ll come back and collect you, and if it’s worth our time, we can go back.” Hamlet was rather pleased with the solution he’d offered, though he could tell Romeo and Juliet were not. He supposed they were thinking that the limits of the Afterjord weren’t set in stone, and that walking away from them now might mean walking away for the last time. Not because he would intentionally abandon them, but because the Afterjord conspired to keep them apart.

Hamlet had certainly let that thought cross
his
mind as he’d made his promise.

“And if you’re killed?” Juliet demanded, still cradling Romeo’s head in her lap. “If you never come back, it will be up to me to get him back to Midgard?”

“You’re capable enough in a fight, Juliet. Among the three of us, you’ve had the most success in battle. You rescued me from the sirens and from the vision of Ophelia. You killed the berserker and the fire giant. All Romeo and I have done is dispatch some ugly, hungry ghosts. You even killed Romeo, remember.”

“
I
dispatched a giant maggot, you ill-bred pox-blossom,” Romeo muttered wearily, but his heart wasn’t in the insult. “But he does have a point, Juliet. Of all of us, you seem to have the most power here. It was you who killed the fire giant. Neither the prince nor I could have made that sacrifice. You’ve saved us more than once. I trust you with my life.”

Juliet looked from Romeo to Hamlet, her eyes wide. Then something turned to steel inside her, it seemed, for she nodded, her jaw grimly set. “All right. But you must return for us, Hamlet.”

“You can trust that I will,” he assured her. Looking up to the ravens, he told them, “Well, lead on. I haven’t got all day.”

He followed the ravens toward the distant mountain, looking back once to waggle his fingers at Juliet and Romeo, who still watched him. Only when they were out of sight did Hamlet look up to the birds soaring on the air not far from his head.

“We’re alone now. You can tell me what it is you really want from me.” He hadn’t believed for a moment that they merely wanted to “show” him something. They’d separated him from the other two for a reason. He had no illusions about that.

“It just so happens, we know what you’re looking for,” Hugin cawed.

“Yeah, we just don’t think the other ones are going to be much help in finding the remaining keys,” Munin confessed. “We thought you might want to strike out on your own and get all the glory for yourself.”

“I’m a prince. I don’t need glory. I already get plenty of attention.” Hamlet raised an eyebrow. “Come down here and talk to me properly.”

With reluctant, muttering clucks, both birds drifted down and perched on Hamlet’s outstretched arm.

“Fine, fine. You caught us,” Hugin admitted. “We picked you to win the challenge, you lucky winner.”

“To win the challenge…you mean, to face some horrible challenge on my own?” Hamlet shook his head. “What is this meant to teach me? Bravery? The value of friendship? Something about the strength that lies inside of me?”

“Well, when you put it like that you make it sound all trite and depressing,” Munin grumbled.

“It isn’t that I don’t appreciate cosmic lessons, but I fear I may have learned too many already. What is this point of this place, if all of its teachings are contradictory in nature?”

“The Afterjord doesn’t exist to teach living mortals the lessons they should have learned on earth,” Hugin scolded. “It’s here for the souls of the dead to find peace.”

Hamlet looked doubtfully at the scattered bones and wrinkled his nose at the scent of brimstone. “This is the way you seek to comfort the dead? It looks more like damnation.”

“Your mortal idea of comfort is a fluffy bed and a warm fire,” Munin said with an eerie, birdish tilt of his head. “To a soul tormented by a life of misdeeds, the only comfort might be pain and punishment.”

“Why did you even bother coming, if you don’t want glory?” Hugin asked him with a disapproving quork.

“I didn’t mean to come at all.” He thought back to the caverns below Elsinore. They now seemed ages away. “I meant to show Romeo the way. It seemed too great a coincidence that what he sought was the very thing that I had found, a way to enter the land of the dead. I thought perchance he might actually rescue his love and return with knowledge I could use. My father charged me with protecting the secret of the corpseway, but how was I to protect something if I had no knowledge of what it did, or where it led?”

“You could have explored it yourself,” Munin said with a snap of his shiny black beak. “Your father told you to keep the corpseway safe, and you showed it to someone who sought to breach the veil and meddle with matters of life and death?”

Though Hamlet hadn’t given that irony a thought, a bitter guilt in him thundered to a sudden boil, an emotion that had been held back by some unconscious force. He’d waited no longer than a day before betraying his father’s secret.

“Seems to me that if you wanted to find something like that out, you should have done it on your own,” Hugin suggested.

Hamlet would not admit that the bird was right. At least, not aloud. It was too cruel, to be shown for the first time something that had always been before his eyes.

I should have ventured into the Afterjord myself. But I was too cowardly, too uncertain. My father would not have been.

He had harbored a secret hope of seeing King Hamlet again in the Afterjord, but now he didn’t know if he could face him. The ravens were right; he’d let his father down.

Hamlet had dreaded that one day he would be King of Denmark. With the glory came servitude, to his people and their well-being. As he would be king, he would also be slave. All his life, he’d complained of his noble fate. An insidious doubt now crept over him, and he considered the possibility that the throne was not an obligation to be dreaded, but a vocation he should have dedicated himself to fulfilling.

Had that been why Claudius had assumed the role of king so easily? His treachery alone wouldn’t have been enough to secure him the throne. If Hamlet had applied himself, if he’d been as keen to learn the workings of the kingdom as he’d been to explore foreign myths and dead languages, would his subjects have rejected Claudius’s usurpation outright?

Hamlet’s thoughts turned to his actions since he’d come into the Afterjord. It had taken Romeo’s intervention to set Hamlet on this adventure. What kind of a leader did that make Hamlet?

He scowled at the birds. “Just take me to whatever test I’m supposed to pass or fail, and let’s be done with it. If you could be clear about the instructions, that would save me a lot of time.”

“You have nothing but time,” Hugin cawed, flapping his wings. The two birds took off in flight again, circling, circling above Hamlet in the dark gray sky. “Until you don’t, which may be soon.”

…

“
There, does that feel better?” Juliet tucked her burned skirt tighter around Romeo, huddling beside him to guard him from the rising chill in the air. She wished there were anything else she could do for him. They could certainly have used that Fire Giant now.

She snickered at the thought of the trapped demon raging as they luxuriated in the infernal heat of his blaze. Her sense of humor had never been so dark in life.
I must be going mad.

“What’s so funny?” Romeo’s teeth chattered as he spoke, but his eyes somehow held humor.

When she had first met him at her father’s party, Juliet had thought Romeo a very silly person. Not proper and serious like Paris, who her mother had constantly thrown into her path. Not dark and dangerous like Tybalt, who glowered fearfully and never took any joy in life. A boy so very like the stories her mother told of the early days of her marriage to Juliet’s father, before the rift had widened between them and left them both so deeply unhappy. Juliet had known, with all of her soul, that it would not be so with Romeo. Perhaps that thought was driven by naiveté, and the belief that she was special, that she deserved more, simply by virtue of wanting.

But it was more than that. Romeo had been as shallowly romantic as any young man in love, professing deepest passion from the moment they had met. She’d reveled in that attention, but in his every word and gesture there had been a depth of care that had unnerved her. She had not believed him when he professed true love from the courtyard below her balcony, but she’d been content to play along with his dramatic proclamations. As he had charmed her with his passion, she’d seen the truth of him; that he loved deeply and without reservation. She’d found herself returning that love, no matter how ill advised. And now that he’d followed his love through death, she had no reason to doubt it.

“I was just thinking we should go back and set up camp by the Fire Giant. Perhaps find a talking raven to cook over his foot.”

Romeo chuckled, and it looked painful.

“Hush,” Juliet bade him. His hands were folded over his chest. She laid hers on top of them. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You can’t avoid making me happy,” he told her, and her heart ached.

There was little they could talk about in this place to cheer themselves. Juliet feared speaking about the past and Verona. She didn’t want to remind him of their despair at being separated or the drastic measures he had taken to find her again. Causing him pain would have been the worst thing, to her mind.

And yet she had to speak, because the silence between them was too much to bear. “Romeo…”

“Don’t.” There was no humor in his expression now. “I know your feelings for me have changed. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”

The words shocked her. What could he possibly mean?

“No, I do!” She made a tutting noise and closed her eyes, trying to unscramble her own thoughts. “That isn’t what I meant. I don’t have to pretend. Because my feelings haven’t changed. Why would you think such a thing?”

“Because you want me to return to Midgard.” He didn’t level this as an accusation, but stated it as fact. “If you didn’t want me to stay with you, you could have simply said so.”

He thought she didn’t want him. Juliet’s heart ached at that. “Romeo… it is not because I wish to be rid of you that I would see you safely back in Midgard. I want you to go there because I want you to live.”