It’s too much.
I’m staggering now, almost at the edge of the crowd ofhumans, almost out. I need to escape them and their pain and their feelings and all that they are. People condensed into a single moment, a memory, a feeling. It’s too much. And there’s so much blood.
Terror. My heart stops. My thoughts falter. Flashes of blood and pain and exhaustion but above it so much terror. I fall to my knees in the mud.
It’s not mine, it’s not mine.I chant like it will keep me sane through all of this delirium.
But itissomeone’s.
The thought snaps me from the terror and I see a woman stumbling in front of me, staring around manically though there’s no one else around. There’snothingelse around, not even asphodel. How far have I come while trying to escape the mortal souls?
She’s drawing power from me and it’s taking everything I have not to fall into her memories again.
‘It’s all right,’ I choke. My voice is hoarse but she blinks and her eyes focus on me.
Every second she is near me she becomes more of herself.
‘What?’ She shakes her head like she can shake the confusion from herself. Instinctively I reach for her, taking her hand and she jumps.
‘You can touch me?’ she asks. ‘I … I can feel you.’ She stares at the arm that slowly forms beneath my touch. ‘Who are you?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I say. ‘But I won’t hurt you.’
‘Where am I?’ she asks, staring at the emptiness around us – black earth meeting black sky unbroken all around.
Will this break her? I don’t think so – nothing could be worse than her fear.
‘The Underworld,’ I say simply.
Realization dawns on her face and she nods like this all makes sense. ‘Of course. I remember now.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Larissa.’
‘Why were you so scared, Larissa?’
She looks up and she’s terrified. Of course she is. Whatever terror she faced in life was so strong it’s all she became after death.
‘You don’t need to ask me,’ she says. ‘You can do whatever you did before to … see my memories.’
‘But do you want me to know?’ I ask. Entering her mind feels like an invasion, even if her memories are almost unavoidable. My head is pulsing with the effort of keeping them at bay but me touching her, purposely rather than as before, seems to have restored her to a fully rational being.
She startles at the question. After a moment, she nods, and I lower my defences.
Her memories smother me. I do not witness them as an observer but feel them, understand them.
I breathe in the life of this woman and I feel her suffering. I see every inch of the terror of her life and, as her memories bleed out again, I feel her terror still. Something here and now is terrifying her.
I pull free of her memories and bring a shaky hand to my cheek but my eyes are dry. I cannot leave her like this. If I do she will be reduced to pure terror again.
‘I can make you forget,’ I say, because it is all I can offer her. I can show her to the Lethe’s waters.
‘That’s not …’ She struggles to find words and I don’tunderstand. Why would she want to remember this? The feeling of her memories still lingers. What is the point in being a god if you can do nothing about the things humans do to one another?
Then again, my father coerced his own wife into marrying him after forcing himself on her, something to save her reputation. I think of all the other people he’s hurt: the girls running as fast as they can; Prometheus chained to a rock, his guts torn from him again and again.
What is the point in being a god if it is the evil who escape all the pain in this world?
