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“Hey,” she says, sitting beside me in the back of the boat. “You okay?”
I lift a brow, wishing there was a moon in Styx to shine down on her. I want to see her eyes, her long lashes, the curve of her nose. Everything.
“I’m okay. Just, it’s a lot.”
“Death?”
I nod. “I’ve done it once, don’t really wanna do it again.”
“I know. But I think this will be less painful for you.” She lowers herself to the bottom of the boat, her feet tucked under her knees, resting her head on my lap.
“A different kind of pain.” I was shot in the chest the first time I died, a victim of a crime I wasn’t involved in, but hell, I paid the price. Bled to death on the concrete while my brother held me in his arms.
This, though? This life with Tennyson was totally different than in the apartment where I grew up. A single mom trying to make ends meet month after month. Bills left unpaid, hot water gone, and heat a luxury.
Then I came here, grieved the loss of my family sure, but I was welcomed into the arms of a new kind of family. A new existence was born in the darkness.
“Maybe Eric has an idea… he came up with going to this river,” I say, praying to a God I don’t believe in for a way out of hell.
“I don’t know what scares me more,” Ten whispers as the faint fog of morning rising on the water surrounds us. We’ve been up all night. “Your soul being buried forever, or spending eternity in the Underworld, no longer remembering the life you used to have.”
“I can’t even think like that yet,” I tell her. “I can’t imagine life without you.”
Tennyson’s shoulders shake as I row and it’s as if we’re moving through a river made of her tears.
“Tell me a happy story,” she asks. It’s one of her favorite things to do, to hear stories from a world she has nearly forgotten.
“Once upon a time there was a boy who lived in a city full of people. It was hard living there, scary. Gunshots and gangs. And he thought he’d be stuck there forever, never to escape.”
“What happened to the boy?” She looks up at me, knowing the ending.
“He happened upon another world where he fell in love with a woman he’d never have had a chance with Earth-side.”
“You don’t know that,” Ten shushes.
“But I do know. When I was living, my future was bleak. Then I died and got a new lease on life with a woman who was beautiful, funny, and so fucking forgiving.”
“You think too much of me,” she says, looking up at me. I rest the oar in its oarlock and scoop her up in my lap.
“No, Tennyson. I think I got my happy ending once when you found me. I’m not so foolish to believe I’ll get it again.”
“Is once enough?” she asks, her lips parting, her breathing shallow.
“Once is more than most people ever get in their lifetime.”
Then I kiss her, holding her in my arms, offering her the broken pieces of myself, overwhelmed with how perfectly we fit together despite our cracks.
* * *
There is the slightest differentiation between day and night in Styx. Daytime turns the world gray, but it’s brighter than the pitch dark of night. Ten and Hawthorne don’t notice the change, but they’ve been here longer and can’t remember sunrises and sunsets the way I can.
As we finally get to the fork in the River Styx and head east, I’m glad that I can make out the landmarks. I hate the idea of not knowing where I am, even if I don’t quite understand where Styx is in the grand scheme of things. I must that missed the English classes in high school where they discussed Greek mythology -- because it turns out that shit is real. The Underworld is no joke, and Mount Olympus -- some fucking palace in the sky -- is apparently where the gods and goddesses live.
And here we are, on a boat looking for some magic river that can get us the hell out of this in-between.
14
Tennyson
According to Eric, Acheron is called the river of sorrow, and one look at the desolate landscape, I understand why. There is a deep moaning coming from the depths of the water and dark-winged birds dip into the marshy reeds.
“It’s so cold,” I say, shivering, still barefoot and barely dressed. South’s leather jacket helps, but it makes me feel shitty to know he’s cold too. We’re standing on the riverbank, and we don’t know which way to go.
“Why is it called the river of sorrow?” I ask, wishing we’d gone back to the place we’d been living so I could change clothes. But considering my men are literally half the men they were before, there is no time to waste.
