BURN IN HADES (28 page)

“Yeah, I’ve met a few of them. They came for my neck. They burned. I didn’t.”

“I’m not talking about your memories, Cross. I’m referring to the others who are also searching for the last Toran.”

Cross paused, looking as curious as the Raven felt. It was beyond her how Prior Sinuhe could have known about the Toran.

“Toran?” said Cross. “What do you mean?”

The Raven smiled at his acting ability. She didn’t think Sinuhe believed him though, but it was smart of Cross to not show his cards, even to a supposed friend. It was difficult to know which soul to trust in the underworld.

Sinuhe reminded the Raven of herself. He was extremely subdued in his facial expressions and mannerisms and he seemed to have absolute control over his emotions. Everything about his behavior was deliberate. A soul would only get as close to him as he intended. He continued to stand there like a pillar of imperviousness, arms folded and hands tucked into his sleeves.

“The Rudimen and the Ankou are allowed to come and go as they please,” said Sinuhe. “It’s their job. But for souls like us, there are very few ways to leave. One of those ways is through a Toran. Don’t pretend as if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Cross waved a dismissive hand. “The Toran’s just a myth. It doesn’t exist.”

“That’s only what I told you in those silly tales. I was lying then, just as you are now. I possess an object that allows me to keep watch over you at distances greater than you can imagine. I know what you’re up to.”

“So you don’t talk to me for three hundred years, but you continue to spy on me all this time?”

“For your own good.”

“You know nothing about what’s good for me.”

“Unfortunately, I know more than you do. And given what you’re up against, you’d better hope you can turn that around.”

“What am I up against?”

Sinuhe lowered his head and shook it. “Just find the Toran before anyone else does. Do that and you have nothing to worry about.” Sinuhe returned to placing angel statues in the boxes.

Forfax’s ring glinted on Sinuhe’s finger. He must’ve been the man she saw at the squal’s ceremony months ago. He stole the Eye of Providence from the squal. That must’ve been the object he had referred to that allowed him to see across great distances.

Cross stormed across the room, kicking up straw that littered the floor. He grabbed Sinuhe’s arm. The monk spun around.

“If you believe so much in a last Toran,” said Cross. “Why aren’t you going after it?”

“Because it isn’t meant for me.” Sinuhe laid a hand on Cross’s shoulder. “It’s meant for you. But the others have no regard for things like destiny. They won’t hesitate to steal it for themselves.”

“Well if it’s my destiny, then it’ll be impossible for anyone to steal it away from me. It’s all mine.”

“Sometimes, very rarely, the right disturbance can alter a soul’s fate. That is what you’re up against.”

“Why are you telling me all this? Why would you help me after everything?”

“Because we’re old friends,” said Sinuhe. “And when you get out of here, you’re going to come back for me.”

Cross laughed. “I think you’ve got your robe wrapped too tight, Sinuhe. You’ve been living in Holy Land way too long, my friend. Because if I ever leave this place I ain’t never coming back. For nobody. Especially for an old good for nothing friend like you.”

Sinuhe smiled, showing his first sign of emotion since the conversation began. “I’m such a horrible friend. Yet you stand before me, not even knowing why you’re the Man Who Remembers.”

“Because I never drank from the River Lethe.”

“Exactly,” said Sinuhe. “Every soul that comes to the underworld drinks from river of Lethe. All except you. Why is that?”

Cross shrugged. “The ferrymen wouldn’t let me. And I was really thirsty too. But they held me back and told me it was poison. I saw the other spirits drinking it, but I believed what the ferrymen told me because they weren’t drinking. I was fresh fish then. What did I know? Still wonder why they did that though.”

“The Ankou refused you that drink because I paid them.”

Cross leaned his head back. “Why would you do something like that?”

“Because drinking from the River Lethe causes complete forgetfulness of any trace of your previous life.”

“But why would you want me to remember my life?”

“I only did as instructed.”

“By who?”

“By a power greater than that of all the underworld.”

“Magna Mater?”

“No, no. I think you know who.”

“The Nothing?”

“You’ve only recently discovered what the Nothing is, but there are many souls, like me, who have known of its true nature for a very long time.” Sinuhe stepped over to the window and gazed out into the falling snow. “The Tribulation believes the Nothing to be a pariah within their system of ancient deities, which will annihilate all existence thereby bringing unwarranted change. That’s why they resist it. On the other side you have the Anarchists who consider the Nothing to be a symbol of hope. They believe it paves the way for a prosperous future.

“Incidentally, both sides are right. The problem is neither side listens to the other. The Tribulation are trying to hold onto the glories of their past, but either they don’t realize, or they just don’t care, that this golden age they refer to was a horrible time for everyone else. They are uniformed and fight against their own self-interest. The deities never cared about them. They abandoned the Tribulation long ago. Even they disagreed with the actions taken by their followers in their holy names.

“Meanwhile, the Anarchists have developed this sick idea of oppression, and not even I know what they stand for anymore. That’s the trouble with ideologies. They each demonize the other side so much that when it’s time to come together and make things happen, it becomes impossible. Even more problematic is that neither side listens to the Nothing itself. And who pays the price? We do.” Sinuhe gripped the windowsill with both his hands. “The innocent always pays the price for the incompetence of decision makers.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Cross. “So, what does all this have to do with finding the Toran being my destiny?”

“This is why I was away.” Sinuhe faced Cross. “From the very beginning, your mere presence here in the underworld doomed everything. You played a part in creating this colossal mess, these wars. You thought you could just make your worldly concepts available without any repercussions. Now, everyone knows of the Man Who Remembers and his tales of life beyond.” Prior Sinuhe chuckled. “To think, after all those legends I imparted onto you over the years, you ended up becoming one of your own making. You’ve surpassed mythical status, Cross and become an undeniable fact of afterlife. You’ve changed the course of many tides. Before you arrived, each underworld had its own system. During your stay, it has all collapsed.”

Cross picked up an angel statue out of a box. “You’re saying I destroyed the underworld?”

“Nulla si crea, nulla si distrugge, tutto si trasforma,” said Sinuhe.

“What the hell does that mean?” asked Cross.

“Nothing is what it once was since your arrival. The only gate still standing is the A’raf of paradise. You know, I never understood why they extended the A’raf to block the River Lethe from the damned until now. I think their goal was to prevent you from reaching it, but it’s only a matter of time before it falls like all the others. Cerberus now wanders the underworld without a gate to guard. Níðhöggr has abandoned Hvergelmir. Everything is evolving.”

“Let me tell you something.” Cross waved the statue in the monk’s face. “This place was hell way before I got here.”

“And now it is unthinkably much worse off.”

“I don’t see how. And so what? What if the underworld is ending? What do you want me to do about it? Build an Ark?”

Sinuhe sighed. “You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem.”

“The way I see it,” said Cross, “if it weren’t for you paying the ferrymen to stop me from drinking from the River Lethe, I wouldn’t have any stories to tell and none of this would have happened. This is your mess. Not mine.”

“And your exit from the underworld is the only way either of us can even begin to clean it up.”

“Well good riddance.” Cross smashed the statue on the floor. “The underworld never did anything for me. I don’t even know why you care so much about it.”

The unbroken statues cried a melody similar to those that Cross always sang, but without lyrics. It reminded the Raven of home.

“That’s your problem,” said Sinuhe. “You don’t care about anything or anyone but yourself. Your ego is the size of a colossus, and you’re diseased with a skewed sense of self-entitlement. Outside of evil, you’ve managed to do nothing worthwhile. All I’ve seen has been atrocity upon atrocity. You truly don’t deserve to leave. If it were up to me you wouldn’t.”

The angelic song of lament pouring from the statues overpowered the Raven’s focus and she found it hard to juggle between listening to the singing and following Cross’s conversation with Sinuhe, both of which she wanted to hear equally.

“You think you’re better than me?” said Cross. “Look where we are. You don’t know what I go through. The burden of knowing what I know. What it’s like outside of here. No one does. You have your path and I have mine.”

“Just because we’re dead,” said Sinuhe, “doesn’t mean all hope is lost. There’s always hope. This environment doesn’t make us, but as long as you allow it to determine who you are, you will remain a resident.”

The angelic choir drowned out the argument. The Raven’s eyes filled with a watery blur. Unrequited love enveloped her. She remembered how Father’s love had yanked away from her in her distant past. She was more broken than the statue on the floor of that storage room. She covered her ears, refusing to relive the pain of past.

Sinuhe stepped in front of her and stared directly into her eyes. She backed away from him, stunned, but then understood that he could see her because he possessed the Eye of Providence.

“Embrace it,” he said.

“Embrace what?” she asked.

He swept the shattered angel pieces with a broom. Cross was no longer in the storage room, which meant he was headed back to her room. Prior Sinuhe knew she was there the entire time and never announced her presence to Cross. Why?

She averted her eyes from the mirror. Her twin vanished out of the storage area and jumped back into the mirror as her reflection. She felt as if she had just woken up from a daydream.

Cross met back up with the Raven, and they silently packed the boat with supplies for their journey to wherever the last Toran was located. Gimlet led the four ghost horses, and all five beasts hauled the duo in the boat away from the snowy cathedral.

“I didn’t tell you my very best friend runs this place?” Cross asked the Raven as she steered the boat. “He’s the boss. That’s who I went to go see. He didn’t even want me to leave. He begged me to stay. He offered me food and drink, and even invited you to join us. Whenever we see each other, he hugs me tight and never lets me go. He kisses my check tells me to be safe. He cares about me, you know.” Cross turned away from her and stared out into the deserted snow banks. He lowered his voice to a somber tone. “My friend loves me like a brother. We’re practically family. Picture that. Even a hard case like me has a one true friend somewhere in the underworld who will never refuse me warm barbot soup.”

There was a charming naivety in the child-like manner in which he tried to fib to her. His face was stony, but unmistakable sadness pervaded the beat of his heart. She sympathized with the filthy slug. In fact, he wasn’t such a filthy slug in that moment.

She saw a lot of herself in him. There was some good in his soul. The good was just buried deep under a heap of ugly, like hers. The only reason he had tried to burn her was because she tried to burn him first. If she had approached him differently from the start, then conceivably their relationship could have been better now. They could have even been friends. She missed having friends. Cross may have been a total jerk, but he was the type of soul that would defend a friend’s honor with the same intensity that he used to retaliate against his enemies.

She’d seen him extol Gimlet constantly throughout their journey together. The first week of her recovery in Vingólf, she had kept her still-working ears locked on him out of suspicion, and for her own protection, and from the discomfort of her bed, she eavesdropped on him speaking to the cornurus.

Cross had profusely apologized to Gimlet for his striking the cornurus in Yomi. He specifically didn’t ask for her forgiveness. He expressed his regret and remorse and promised never to harm her again. The sincerity in his voice was undeniable to her ears.

He obviously cared about the cornurus, and the draggles just as much. Her slaying of the poor creatures seemed to be the spark that lit his fuse. He would have attempted to burn her out of his need for revenge at some point, but his complete descent into madness began with their second deaths. They were the reason he had risked sacrificing his own afterlife, dragging her through the black lands of the Nothing. She took the draggles away from him, and she was sorry for the most part. But she couldn’t tell him that. Not now. The two of them were still adversaries. It wouldn’t change anything between them.

She handed him the flask as a friendly gesture. He wiped his eyes, drank, and began humming.

“What are those songs you’re always singing?” she asked him.

“They’re called spirituals. You like them?”

“I’m not sure. They make me feel…a certain way.”

“There are two kinds of spirits in the underworld: those that can feel the breath of the Great Goddess grace over them when they hear her song, and those that feel something else. If you can feel Magna Mater’s breath, that’s a good thing. If you’ve never felt it before, it can be a little scary at first, but you shouldn’t resist it. You should embrace it.”

That was the same thing Prior Sinuhe said.

“Now if you feel that other thing,” Cross continued, “then I can only feel sorry for you, my friend. You’ll want to avoid it but I don’t think it’s possible.”