Down the dank mouldering paths

and past the Ocean’s streams they went

and past the White Rock

and the sun’s Western Gates

and past the Land of Dreams,

and soon they reached the fields of asphodel

where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths

of mortals make their homes…

~(Odyssey 24.5-9)

Chapter 1

Present Day, Mt. Olympus

There existed no other way to deal with one’s father, King of the Gods, except cutting to the chase, as modern man more oft than not coined the phrase. Calliope looked into Zeus’s azure eyes. "I give up, Father. I inspire nothing among these wealthy lazy humans. They bore me to tears. I no longer wish to be immortal." That confessed her fate would be sealed.

Not one fraction of emotion graced his bearded jaw line or relaxed muscular build where he lounged upon his floating marble throne, draped in his long white cotton tunic. The stunningly crystalline blue sky of Mt. Olympus beyond his pure white hair reminded her of the calm jewel tone of the Mediterranean waters awaiting her aching feet. Oh, what a day today would be, spent basking in Helio’s sunny rays as dolphins danced in the sea.

A breeze fingered Zeus’s long white locks tucked beneath his favored oak wreath.

Not wind. Was he annoyed? If the wind blew, she would certainly know her spoken truth was not the candid point a daughter was allowed to express.

"I do not find that amusing, Calliope." His patronizing words resonated with condescension. "Do you not recall the heroes whose deeds you sing?"

Amusement had nothing to do with the confession. How could he compare history’s champions to the twentieth-century’s over-stimulated couch potatoes? He had to understand. The hefty price of useless purpose had obliterated her desire to take up her stylus and record heroic deeds upon her wax tablet. "Where have all the heroes gone, Father? I gaze upon the Known World and see nothing but hatred, greed, disease, and starvation."

A gust of wind shot through the heavens.

Alas, Zeus was disgusted. Would he even listen?

He waved her off like a nagging fly.

What joy life would be in the form of an insect. Something small. Meaningless. Free. Able to live and love. Oh, what of life with a normal family? To have babes. To think of nothing but rearing one’s children. Millennia had passed since she held more than a stylus, the very object shackling her to her torture. Only release from muse burdens could ease her spirit. "You will hear me out. I have stood by the gods. Recitations, I willingly provided. I felt each one a sacred act of devotion. But I have lost my own inspiration. Set me free, Father. I request to be mortal."

Gray clouds burst into view behind him.

"I cannot believe I’m hearing such childish pleas from my eldest and wisest daughter," he snarled.

A lightning bolt crashed through the heavens.

Well, no sense in wasting the effort spent. "My wisdom is what saddens me. Can you not understand? There are no songs left to sing to an audience playing video games and text messaging. Where is the honor in those actions? Dare to insist an epic poem can unfold upon a cell phone’s tiny screen a few words at a time and I will relent. Forget reason. My purpose has ended. Turn me into stone. Cast me—"

"Silence," he shouted, jerking a hand off in one direction.

A lightning bolt shot from his fingertip through the rumbling heavens.

He had to listen. Release her from the eternal insanity of everlasting immortality. "Then speak with Gaia, Father. She gave you the apples of—"

"Enough," he shouted. "I challenge you to prove there is no merit among any one soul lost to history, a soul whose heroism remains un-extolled. If you can’t, I shall speak with Gaia myself." He leaned toward her, off his throne. His face mushroomed until the crow’s feet around one of his eyes appeared as long and wide as an athlete’s muscular leg. Ancient Musings

Was there anything left to be said when peering into your father’s enormous reflective pupil? Death would have been a nicer punishment. Instead, she could only see herself holding her tablet and stylus. The good daughter. Talk about windows to the soul. In the omnipotent eye of her sire, nothing had changed. She stood trapped, a pawn of stronger gods. "Where shall I search, Father?"

A gulp popped in his throat. He began to squeal. His head retreated with a huge gust of wind.

His breath. Life’s breath. One’s psyche. How odd he had so much at one moment and the next his psyche was almost nonexistent. But his godly chore reigning over the earth gave him so much power. And where was power for a goddess? Dionysus and his magic wine always stole a goddess’s senses only to leave her wondering how she awoke in some god’s bed when the Hours first sang Helios’ ascension in the morning. Not that wedding a god was any better. Why engage in another ridiculous intimate relationship when all the gods had proven themselves childish already? Wedding a mortal was only short-term marriage. Marriage was a worse chore than manning a stylus. Add the fact there was no purpose left for a muse without an audience. No heroes and no children meant a muse’s purpose was utterly lost.

"Perhaps you should reveal your wish to Gaia yourself." Zeus reclined upon his throne and pinched air out of the instantaneously clear blue heaven. "Take this." He flicked something toward her.

Sunlight danced upon the small twirling object.

A sunny day indicated he sat victorious. Only a fool wouldn’t catch what Zeus tossed.

"Purchase your hero carefully, Calliope, for his soul can make or break you."

What sort of riddle was that? She reached for the article.

The firm rounded thing smacked her palm.

A disk.

Sunlight flashed into total darkness.

She was there. Yet, she was not. For the darkness seemed to move around her. Milling. Edging closer. Rather, withdrawing like waves on the beach. She blinked and squinted into the void. Skhye Moncrief

What a dream the day would have been if she found herself sitting upon the beach.

"At long last, a muse has arrived to entertain me in my kingdom," a male voice stated calmly. "Oh, what fortune rains down upon the underworld."

Hades’ bemused tone. She squinted harder and peered into the shifting shadows in hopes of spotting the Olympian.

"Behind you, Calliope."

Cat and mouse? What a farce the day had become. She turned.

Hades stood near a hearth filled with glowing embers. The soft light barely etched out his stoic features she had seen so often when the Olympians met to hold counsel. For the warmth the remnants of a fire provided, one would expect he wore more than a simple white tunic-shaped chiton edged with a dark border and sandals. But the underworld wasn’t known for discomfort, sickness, or hunger.

"What brings you to my palace?" He snaked his arms across his chest.

The god of the underworld wouldn’t be happy to hear his rival brother sent her on a quest through Hades’ realm without his permission. One mention of Zeus and the journey ended before it began. "I must speak with Gaia."

"Who must venture through the dark cramped underworld to speak with Mother Earth?" He took aimless steps toward her, swinging a stick like a cane.

His two-pronged scepter. A harpoon, nonetheless.

"She’s an ancient powerless goddess. Nor does anything of any consequence to a muse occur down here, Niece. Especially with Persephone so far away this time of year."

The tap of the tip of his scepter’s handle on the stone floor didn’t drive away the underworld’s cloaking blackness.

So much stone and suffocating shadows. King Hades had to feel imprisoned inside his castle. Two more moons would pass before his wife returned to the underworld for late fall and winter. Locked away from his wife; unable to protect her. His frustrations expressed his desire to Ancient Musings

perform as a dutiful husband. How noble. What was life with a responsible spouse? Complementing him on the point would only anger him. But perhaps he might help a lost muse on her journey with a drop of nectar to sweeten his disposition. "I saw Persephone only yesterday, Uncle. She wandered through the grape orchards, in a contemplative state. Surely, she thought of you."

A chuckle burbled in the hovering darkness.

"You did not answer my question." He claimed a space squarely before her.

How to fool the cat? She wanted to gaze into his eyes to show him how fearless she was. Darkness should have masked his features. Instead, a strange soft glow gilded his proud nose and cropped black beard.

"Why have you come?" he demanded.

Nothing remained in her future but wandering through the underworld. Without Hades’ assistance, there would be no future for her at all. No future meant death. Nobody ever escaped from the underworld. Had Zeus actually sentenced her to an end without a chance to say goodbye to friends and family? So much for riddles. The underworld’s strangeness required a new strategy to seek out Gaia. Time to choose a hero. An ally. Time to be honest. "To ask Gaia to make me mortal."

"Absurd." He flinched backward and strode toward his coals. "Am I to believe such foolishness from one so wise?" He circled his fire pit and locked a dark gaze upon her. "We are all fools. You for your wish. My brothers and I for fighting over kingdoms. Look where I ended up, Niece. Nowhere."

Hades couldn’t deny living a heroic life. "You have a wife and welcome her and your husbandly duties with the changing seasons. What is more honorable than that? And to guard the sun as he sleeps? How can you say you have no purpose? What of the earth’s most precious treasures? Gold, silver, precious stones. You guard them here with your army of psyches. If it weren’t for your honor, the earth would be stripped of her riches by humans—"

He waved off her words. "You know so much about my kingdom, do you?" A chuckle rumbled around them. "One little muse knows so much." The chuckle thundered off until the ink-black distance snuffed the dying echo into nothingness. But he never looked away. "You dare to patronize me?"

She had been there only once before. Inside the castle to judge the love held between Hades and Persephone before the truce was made to allow Persephone to return home in the spring each year. But Hades was angry now. Too angry to debate.

"Forgive me, Uncle. By your leave, I shall depart at once." If there were ever a need for handy servants, the time was now. Where was the door in this dismal place? She scanned the darkness to the left.

"Leave, you shall." His clipping legs snapped up the distance between them in four steps. He grabbed her arm and clutched it up where she could see her elbow and forearm glowing a soft yellow beneath the tip of her nose.

She dared not stare at her arm, to appear stunned by her luminescence. She met his indomitable stare and squeezed the disk in her hand. Whatever Zeus sent her into the underworld with was the only magic she possessed now.

"It’s time for you to meet the populace, little muse."

Hades’ tight grip on her upper arm ushered her through more sterile darkness to a large metal door. Her body produced enough light to cast the enormous rectangle in partial form. The triangular hinges alone were as big as the head of a wolf. Fangs. Why did fangs come to mind?

"Open," Hades said.

The door whined, opening to reveal total darkness.

Nothing. The balking door obviously didn’t want to swing out there. Who could blame it?

Hades heaved and shoved her across the threshold, into intense suffocating pressure, and released her arm.

She rubbed at the sore spot where his fingers gripped her elbow. More than the sting of his grip eased. The odd stifling pressure surrounding her body vanished. She turned to her uncle’s barely glowing stately form in the doorway.

"When you’re ready to show some respect, rap upon my door." He pointed off one direction. "Gaia is that way."

Mother Earth was? She spun to look for any sign of the goddess. Ancient Musings

The hinges squeaked.

Hades would not abandon her in the dark without light. She whirled back.

The slamming door thumped.

Not one sound, not even one melodic syllable of the blessed Hours’ never-ending chorus graced the silence. No Helios. No sacred song. This was truly the other end of the world.

So much for Uncle Hades proving heroic. And to think she thought it honorable that he would pine for his missing wife. Hades just fumed in his castle surrounded by darkness and vented on passersby. There could be no light in the underworld. She fisted her fingers, squeezing the firm disk in her hand.

What did Father toss her direction? Slowly, she uncurled her radiant fingers to stare at a small dark coin resting in her palm.

An obol. Her ticket through the underworld. At least, her father hadn’t left her without a means to get home. Hopefully, she would stumble upon the cave in which Persephone escaped each spring along the way to Gaia’s pool. So went the musings of the ancients.

****

The endless sea of surrounding souls shoved their essence against Jake Genoese where he struggled to maintain a foothold in Greek Hell. At least, he had learned how to ignore the psyches’ never-ending narcissistic chatter about the events associated with their deaths. The only way to escape this prison was to focus on finding a way across the infamous River Acheron that sucked down souls risking a swim, hoping to gain access to the rest of the less-populated underworld. Talk about a rock and a hard place. Archaeologists often found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Jake never imagined the last Greek site he excavated would land him in the Land of the Dead.

The bodies shifted left, pushing him into more less-than-corporeal beings.

"C’mon, Jake," Sniper begged. "I’ve no place to go."

If only the British Special Forces sharp shooter had a gun that would take out the river’s overlord, Charon. They could all hop that big deity’s ferry and get this party rolling. "Think of something else."

"I hate that answer."

Didn’t everyone? "You’ve spent four more years than I in this nuthouse, Sniper. Surely, you’re feeling a bit closer to reaching the light at the end of the tunnel than I am. Cut me some slack."

"Slack is far too precious a commodity here, my friend. I’d keep it for five minutes of lounging aimlessly upon a rock slab if I had any for myself."

"You would. Wouldn’t you?"

Sniper guffawed.

Laughter was almost as rare as personal space on this side of the river. A wise man kept humorous souls close. Without therapeutic discussions, a person could lose his mind among all the pitiful moans and groans of the dead. And oh how the dead could moan and groan.

"Isn’t it time for Hades to stroll through his hinterland?" Sniper asked. "Surely, he’ll be looking for you."

Sniper loved to joke with archaeological terms such as hinterland. "I wish he would. The other souls would give us some space." Souls knew better than to nag their king. Yet, the king sought out the philosophical discussions a Greek archaeologist liked to initiate. With the multitudes of psyches shrinking back in respect due their king, Sniper often snatched a bit of personal space on the edge of the ocean of souls when Hades came calling. Unfortunately, Hades didn’t come daily.

Daily? It was ridiculous to think in terms of time. Time had abandoned him in the Land of the Dead thirty-three extremely long years ago. When Jake awoke to this reality, no less than a nightmare, he thought himself dreaming. But the dream never ended. He had to be dead, as myth dictated by the accounts of his predicament. One moment, he carefully and gently brushed soil from a fresco at an archaeological site. The next, he stood in absolute darkness with pressure bearing down upon him from every angle. Then Hades befriended him because he could discuss Greek society. Luckily, the brooding king explained how souls became trapped because they hadn’t received a proper burial.

By the size of the underworld’s murmuring sea, the influx of the tide of the dead had to encompass soul inflow from the entire planet. The only exit, per Hades’ explanation, was a trip across the River Acheron on Charon’s ferry because the soul-processing backlog required a toll to expedite one’s crossing. Without the fee, each soul had to wait a century for a free ride. And the souls of all who waited to cross the river had been buried without the coin to pay the ferryman. Hence, Hades’ job to protect those buried incorrectly.

A dim spot of light—of all bloody unexpected things—glowed in the distance.

"Christ! What do you take that for?" Sniper blurted his usual Christian exclamation.

The mass of souls rammed in from the left.

"If we’re lucky, Sniper, it’ll be Christ coming to set us free. I’m sick of feeling like I’m standing in a vat of Jell-O." Anybody showing up with a GPS to direct souls through the bottleneck to wherever they should be heading was worth following. If the guide brandished a torch, even more so.

"I can’t believe people eat that gelatin garbage," Sniper groaned.

Like food remained an issue to a soul. It’s funny how life’s memories cling to one’s essence. Science had so much left to learn. So much left to realize. Being stuck for a century did give a man the chance to ponder the mysteries of the universe.

"It’s coming this way," Sniper shouted.

The crowd vacillated as if unable to determine what to do.

Light in the underworld’s darkness was totally unheard of. The souls had to be panicking. "You’re tallest. What can you make out?"

"It’s too far away. And the psyches are in the way. Wait, it’s got a head."

That explained nothing. Everything in the underworld had a head according to Greek mythology. But what people could describe from their experiences probably wasn’t founded on much of anything. No one but Herakles and Aeneas ever ventured into and exited Hades’ domain given legend stood correct.

The head moved toward them.

"It’s a woman," a whisper murmured in the underworld.

A woman? The psyches still blocked most of the view. He could see her eye and her nose when she passed short souls.

"Don’t touch her," the crowd warned.

Souls shifted in every direction and split before him until he saw a full-length tunic dress draped the exquisite woman.

"She’s deadly," voices mumbled.

"Jake, come on," Sniper said. "You don’t know what kind of damage she can do. Remember Alastor’s dice game."

This was no sneaky deity bent on tricking the dead into misbehaving, only to gain the right to punish them. The woman looked lost. She held writing implements, a stylus stick for pressing her native language into wax and the wax tablet she wrote upon. She could have been a simple kore, a beautiful maiden, but there was something regal about her. Some detail he just needed to peg.

"Jake!"

The woman strode toward him, her gaze surveying everything in every direction. She never seemed to notice the wall of souls encircling her at what they obviously deemed a safe distance. She glowed a golden brilliance, the kind of thing one would expect to see from an aura. Hades had one too. But his was a dark light, something that almost didn’t exist, a thing more like camouflage in this unlit void of death. The light had to be indicative of something.

The woman walked right toward Jake.

Would she see him? He didn’t want to move. This Land of the Dead was boring. Following her had to prove more enlightening than hanging out in a vat of Jell-O with moaning narcissistic spirits.

Her body struck his essence with full force, knocking him backward. He caught himself with a back step. She toppled and landed on her bottom. A faint flash of aura bounced off something rolling from her hand.

Something tapped the toe of his boot.

"Curse Zeus and Hades both," she growled and scrabbled on the stone floor. "What to do, Calliope? You’ve lost your only obol."

An obol? Damn the darkness to Hell. He saw where it landed next to his boot. He would have the ferryman’s coin. He reached down into the faint light cast by her aura, plucked the precious token from the darkness, and stared at her dark hair on the back of her head.
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