The Island of Excess Love (15 page)

*   *   *

What the girl is saying is true.

“Who's Xandra?” I ask her. I realize that the wound on my arm doesn't hurt anymore; the skin has healed. “Where's your family?”

“My family is gone.”

I recall the vision I had when I first saw the girl. A woman with skin darker than hers, wearing a pink nurse's uniform, hiding under a table, trying to shelter her children with her body.

“Xandra is the Queen of the Shades. She lives underground. I have to take you there.” The girl's eyes fluoresce, casting a beam of light farther into the darkness, revealing a low, dark tunnel.

Things are starting to add up and I don't like what I think they mean. No pain. Darkness. A journey underground. The disappearance of my loved ones.

“Where are my friends?” I say again.

“If you go to her she won't hurt them,” the girl tells me.

“What does that mean?” I can raise my voice now without it hurting to do so, like I'm on some kind of strong medication. Or dead. I press on my shoulder, testing, and don't even wince. “How did my wound heal?”

The girl holds up her hands, palms facing me, stained purple. Petals that same color lie in a pile beside her.

“Did you heal it?”

She nods. Her worried smile reminds me of Venice.

“Thank you for helping me. What's your name?” I ask.

“Acacia.”

“Where are you from?”

She shrugs. “There was a sea monster. She looked like a pretty girl but she had a dolphin's tail and a wolf's belly and three blue dogs.”

I've seen Giants but I choose to believe that this sea monster is a figment of a child's imagination, a child faced with the loss of her family and (mysteriously, but then again, it's all mystery now) schooled in
The Aeneid
. The sea monster Scylla with her dolphin's tail, wolf's belly, and three “sea-blue hounds” was yet another obstacle Aeneas had to overcome.

“How do you know about Scylla?” I ask.

“My mother read to me and my sister a lot.”

“The storm separated you from your mother and sister?” I wish I hadn't asked. The little girl's eyes cloud over as if with the mist that lies on the ocean. “Acacia,” I say, “thank you again for healing my arm. Now can you show me how to help my friends? And then we can help you.”

She takes my hand and pulls me to my feet; she's incredibly strong. “Come,” she says, handing me a branch. I recognize it as the one Hex tossed at me before he left. “We don't have much time.”

Go to hell
, Hex said. Now it's my chance to go where I deserve to be and maybe save the ones I love if it's not too late.

*   *   *

This is the journey to hell, down through darkling tunnels, toward the center of the earth. I have to stoop over to fit in the low passageways. I can hear water trickling, smell a sulfur stench, and when I reach out the walls feel jagged and slick with slime. As the little girl leads me down, through corridors of rough rock, I think of all the ways I have sinned. Fighting with my mother, making my little brother cry, not appreciating how hard the man who raised me as his own daughter worked to care for us. All the Chimeras and Gorgons and Centaurs and Furies that I have been parade before me in the darkness. I think of how I stabbed a Giant in the eye and killed two people and now, perhaps worst of all—because the killing was in self-defense—betrayed my lover. I don't really believe in sin or hell but then I never believed that Giants and witches and fairies and harpies and antlered illusionists were real either. I worried about global warming but I didn't really believe the world would end. It's not just me who has sinned, but all of humanity by neglecting the planet.

And then I see him.

He is missing his eyes; his nose and left ear have been cut off. Much like Aeneas's comrade Deiphobus, who was mutilated this way by his wife's lover during the battle of Troy. I know this modern-day incarnation of Deiphobus. He is my father, Merk.

I didn't realize until now how much I still need him. Who will bring me food in the night? Who will rescue me from monsters?

“Who did this? Why did this happen to you?” I say, forcing myself to look at his ruined face that speaks of all the destruction I have witnessed in these months since the world came to an end. His empty eye sockets like mine. Is that what I look like? Father and daughter.

“The harpies did it in their fury. It is as it was meant to be,” he says.

“You're really dead? It's not an illusion this time?” Each word feels like a small shard of glass cutting my throat.

“Yes.”

“So we are in hell?”

He frowns. “I prefer to call it the Land of the Shades.”

“Then I'm dead?”

“All true heroes have to make a descent to the underworld in order to be reborn” is his cryptic answer. Why is he speaking like an epic hero all of a sudden?

“Staying dead might be better,” I say, holding back a sob that threatens to tear through my chest.

“No, it wouldn't. Sometimes it takes a while to realize that what we want isn't what's best. You were meant to be here and to find the king. It's for the greater good.”

I stop on the path. A dark mist from the bowels of the earth swirls around us so I can barely see him now. “What about Hex?” I ask. “What about Hex? Why did I do that to him? Was that meant to be, too? Because you and my mother betrayed my adopted father? Is that why I was cursed to betray Hex?”

“That's not why. And I don't regret what I did, even though it hurt my best friend,” he says. “Because if I hadn't been with your mother, you wouldn't have been born.”

Then, before he vanishes into the miasma he speaks these last words: “What was also meant to be is your meeting with the Queen of the Shades.”

At this, Acacia squeezes my hand as if to urge me on.

I don't know who the Queen of the Shades is but I know I have to go to her and try to redeem myself in some way—save my friends, help this little girl, pay the price. I don't know why I'm allowed underground like this at all, assuming I am even still alive.

When I ask my young guide why I am allowed here, she answers, “Anyone who sets foot on this island is in the in-between.” This does not exactly reassure me.

Virgil said it better than anyone as he recounted Aeneas's descent to the underworld:

“The way … is easy;

Night and day lie open the gates of death's dark kingdom:

But to retrace your steps, to find the way back to daylight—

That is the task, the hard thing.”

That is the task.

There is no choice.

*   *   *

The tunnel opens out into a dark cavern dripping with stalactites and lit only by torches. A teenage girl is seated on a chair and surrounded by three low-growling black dogs with one large black-, red-, and yellow-striped snake draping itself around their necks.

I think of Merk's revulsion of the phantom snakes on the ship. I am not a fan of serpents, either.

In contrast to the dark animals, the girl's hair glows like a flock of fireflies, crowning the long sharp angles of her face. As I come closer I see her ice eyes and I remember the vision of the girl in the room with the young king, her brother.

“Xandra the Queen of the Shades,” Acacia whispers to me. She hasn't let go of my hand the whole time and I'm surprised my palm is dry, not sticky with sweat.

“Welcome,” says Xandra. She's beautiful in a strong, almost masculine way. “I'm glad to finally meet the famous Queen Penelope.” She's smiling but it's a dangerous thing on her face.

“Where am I?” I ask.

“Underground on the Island of the Shades.”

“Are you the king's sister? Because I think you aren't alive anymore. And neither are they.” Meaning the dogs and the snake.

“Getting right to the point,” she says. “I admire that. Yes, I'm Dylan's sister, Xandra. I killed myself when I was sixteen. I couldn't deal with all the pain in the world, and the pain I knew was on its way. Dylan stuck it out. He knew you were coming—something about a picture I made. He devoted his life to you. But look what happened.”

“I'm so sorry,” I say, aware of the weird lack of pain in my body, even the dull or sharp aches of emotion. It's as if I've sipped from the river Lethe and forgotten what it was like to feel.

“Yes, it was a tragedy. Another tragedy. And now you're here.”

I look around the cavern but I can't see past the circle of torchlight where Xandra sits. “Where are my friends?”

“Do you mean the boys? And that yappy dog? They're a motley crew. I have them.”

“If you have them … does that mean…?”

She grins skeletally. “No, don't worry. They're still alive for now. At least in part. You all entered the realm of the in-between when you arrived here.”

“Please, may I see them?” I say.

“First you must eat something.” Xandra points her finger and more torches flare, revealing a table piled with silver platters and crystal bowls of food. Whole fish with shining eyes and garnished with snails and small, gelatinous eggs. Turkeys stuffed to overflowing with sausages. Giant whole grilled fungi. Heaps of pastries oozing cream and bloodred sauce. A great white pig with an apple in her mouth and a litter of piglets surrounding her on the platter.

I'm not exactly hungry or thirsty anymore but I'm drawn to the vile food anyway. I lick my lips. They're very dry and tiny flakes of skin stick to my teeth. I remember the words of the harpies.
If you leave us here you will face famine, fire, and flood.

Acacia grips my hand tighter, pulling on my arm, and I turn to look at her. She shakes her head very slightly.
No.

In all the literature I've read about the underworld you must refrain from eating anything or you can never leave. I'm lucky my favorite foods aren't here and for a moment I remember what the king served me at his quartz table.

“No, thank you,” I say.

Xandra smiles from under the corona of her pale hair. “Are you sure? You may not realize it but you're very malnourished and you need sustenance. When's the last time you ate a real meal?”

After the king's seafood stew, rice, salad, and wine there's been nothing but the water and crushed bitter berries Ez gave me.

“Because what Dylan gave you?” Xandra says. “That wasn't real. Weeds and roots and acorns maybe if you were lucky. Even the water you drank was enchanted to appear fresh and clear. After the disaster he gained powers for transforming the appearance of things. He had this fixation on you and how he could create what he thought you wanted to see. I still don't understand it.”

I think of the island after the king's brutal death. No quartz palace full of oil paintings and silk dresses; no flowers, no fruit trees, no meadows. Just ash and debris and bones and ruin. All the wonder of the island had been a glamour cast by the magician king.

There is no beauty left in the world
, I think.

Except for my home, across the sea. But that might be gone now, decimated by Bull. And more important, my friends, my little family—the truest beauty—they might be gone as well.

“I want to see my friends,” I say. “I'm willing to stay here if you let them go. And her, too.” I nod at Acacia.

Xandra taps her lips with one finger. “Very nice. Self-sacrifice. A hero's trait.” She frowns in a way that reminds me of the king. “Fair enough.”

She motions for Acacia to come forward and the little girl drops my hand and walks over to her.

“Go bring them here,” Xandra says.

Acacia looks back at me, the lenses of her eyes glowing green planets in her dusky face, and then she runs off into the darkness.

I guess I'm not entirely dead or drunk on Lethe because when Acacia returns and I see Ez, Ash, and Venice holding Argos I feel something stirring in the cavity of my chest. But I don't run to them the way I normally would and they don't come to me either. Xandra's eyes seem to be waiting to catch any sign of indiscretion.

Argos growls at the black dogs and they calmly turn their heads toward him and bare their teeth. Any of them could snap him up in one bite. Venice struggles to keep him quiet.

“Where's Hex?” I ask.

“The one who likes Virgil. We've been sharing quotes. We'll see if you deserve Hexane or not. Now remember, you haven't eaten or even had much water for longer than you realize. Make yourself at home.

“Oh, one other thing. I thought you'd like this quote Hex and I have been discussing. It's about the death of Queen Dido who killed herself when her lover betrayed her. Not exactly apropos of our situation here but there are similarities.” She puts her hand to her breast and when she speaks again her eyes glitter ferally and her mouth slathers spittle.

“Not yet had Proserpine clipped from her head

The golden tress, or consigned her soul to the Underworld,

So now, all dewy, her pinions the color of yellow crocus,

Her wake a thousand rainbow hues refracting the sunlight,

Iris flew down, and over Dido hovering, said:—

As I was bidden, I take this sacred thing, the Death-god's

Due: and you I release from your body.

She snipped the tress.

Then all warmth went at once, the life was lost in air.”

“But Dido killed herself,” I say, meeting her gaze though it makes my stomach churn. “The king was killed by the harpies.”

“And I blame you for that. He slept with you and they found out and became jealous.”

“But if you were able to haunt that ship, if you were able to make me and Hex find our own corpses, why couldn't you save him?” I ask her.