Muse Unexpected (14 page)

“Bennett is a whole other story. He’s not fond of Muses.”

“Oh. Why?” she said, biting her lower lip.

“Sophie, it’s not for me to say. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask him yourself. We’ll stop in here for a second. This is one of Georgia’s crowning glories. The Muse Library has a copy of each and every book ever written, including items written before books were even invented. The scroll wing is off to your left and there is a whole attached building dedicated to hieroglyphics beyond it. It makes the Vatican’s archives look like a local library branch.”

To Sophie, the room was breathtaking. Domed ceilings soared high and made her memories of the Library of Congress pale in size and opulence. The room they stood in was circular with numerous alcoves and hallways attached to equally large or even larger rooms, offices and meeting rooms. Ornate plasterwork over the alcoves showcased reclining maidens reading scrolls and cherubs in midflight. If walls existed, Sophie couldn’t see them because every inch of wall was covered with books. In a puzzle-like movement, bookshelves folded into other bookshelves, then slid over even more bookcases, which then slid to the next lower or higher floor. Iron, marble and wood balconies attached to walkways crisscrossed throughout the height of the room, creating a lattice pattern and forming a focal point for the gold-leafed dome, which had a center mural of the stars, sun and moon.

Sophie’s thoughts were interrupted as a woman on one of the higher balconies stopped shelving books and slammed one onto the railing in front of her. She made a loud shushing sound that drifted down to the two girls.

“Is she for real?” Sophie laughed, turning to look at Angela and not concerned at the volume of her voice. “Who is tha?”

Another loud shush interrupted Sophie, followed by the sound of the woman leaping onto the railing of the balcony, which seemed strange to Sophie. How the woman could keep her balance and not get sick from looking down from such a height, seemed impossible to Sophie, not to mention the woman was still holding several books Sophie assumed she had meant to shelve.

Before Sophie could ask Angela what the woman was doing, the woman threw the books down and hurled herself away from the balcony and into the air. She dived straight down, her hair flowing behind her and the material of her long, heavy gown flapping in all directions. The woman’s loose sleeves slid backward, exposing dark, bluish skin. Sophie realized the woman had feathers as wings erupted from her forearms and formed along the back of her arms, connecting to the mid-section of her back. Sophie winced, thinking she was about to witness the woman’s guts splattering all over the place, when, the woman changed the direction of her body midair by moving her arms and flapped her wings as she descended to the ground.

Sophie’s mouth hung open. The woman glared at the two girls as she reconstructed her makeshift beehive hairdo, securing it with two black lacquered chopsticks. The feathers that had appeared as she took flight smoothed back into place. The woman towered over the two girls.

Sophie glanced down and noticed the woman’s dress had gathered in places, exposing her legs. Once again, she found herself staring, but couldn’t help herself because the woman’s legs were covered in the same bluish feathers and instead of feet the woman had razor sharp talons.

The nametag on the woman’s dress had a symbol, which Sophie assumed must be associated with the Vasilikós, and below the symbol was the woman’s name, ‘Tammy.’

“This is a library, ladies
.
The
library of the Greek and Italian Vasilikós,” Tammy said with a rich Louisiana accent.

Tammy had amber eyes with specks of shimmering deep red. She was clearly agitated, drumming her talons on the floor much the same way a person would absentmindedly drum their fingers.

“We have rules in the library and ladies, those rules include complete silence. The only sounds I should be hearing are the occasional turning of pages, a polite but extremely muffled cough and the respectful yet hesitant steps of someone getting up to remove or replace a book on the
correct
shelf. Now Angela, did I mention anywhere in this description a casual conversation taking place in rude, loud tones?” Tammy took two steps closer to Angela, her talons clicking on the floor.

“No, ma’am,” Angela answered back, her clipped New England accent showing both her embarrassment laced with a quiet fury.

“Very good. And who, may I ask, are you?” Tammy asked Sophie, with a superior smirk. “Clearly you are not of this Vasilikós. Everyone who visits or resides here is given The Book of Vasilikós Rules and Regulations on a personal eTablet. Chapter 8 provides clear and concise library guidelines, including library etiquette.”

“Tammy, allow me the pleasure of introducing you to Sophia Drago. Daughter of Callie, Muse to this Vasilikós, Granddaughter to Georgia, Grand Duchess and Leader of The Greek and Italian Vasilikós of Muse,” Angela said.

“Yes….” Tammy said, straightening her back to reach her full height. “Georgia was kind enough to let everyone in the Vasilikós know of Sophia’s arrival.” Tammy scrutinized Sophie. “Understand, young Muse, who you are will warrant no special treatment in this Vasilikós.”

Without pausing, Tammy grabbed several books off the table closest to her and sprang into the air.

Sophie stood for a second and then exited the library, walking back in the direction they’d been going.

“Well,” Sophie said as soon as Angela had caught up with her. “Excellent first impression. I’m assuming she is not a Hob, although if she were, several generations of my family and I would be in big trouble.”

“Tammy’s the head librarian,” Angela said. “Sorry, I mean she is a North American Harpy. I believe she is part of the Dupre Clan. They lived deep in the wetlands of Louisiana.”

“We have a Harpy as a librarian?”

“Well, if you want the best to organize your library, you would be hard pressed not to select a Harpy. That is, if you can ever find one.”

Sophie wondered where Georgia had found a Harpy, but then guessed a person didn’t become a Grand Poobah or whatever she was by not being resourceful.

They continued their walking tour; eventually reaching the morning room and, much to Sophie’s relief, breakfast.

***

Life continued similarly for the following two weeks, Angela continuing to discuss the next element of the Vasilikós and Sophie continuing to wonder if she would ever run into Bennett.

“Totally MIA,” Sophie said to herself several times.

Her mother continued to be self-absorbed in whatever she was doing and always kept their interactions to simple topics—nothing requiring any thought or, for the most part, any real involvement. A distance was growing between them, and although she knew her mother could be annoying, nagging and sometimes embarrassing, she also had thought she could always count on feeling a mother/daughter closeness with Callie. It had never failed to be comforting to her. Now, everything was different, which was a fact Sophie often repeated to herself. When she asked her mother about the graffiti painted on the exterior Vasilikós’ garden walls -- it was the word “Nothos”—her mother became irritated and flustered, and left the room. Whatever the word meant, the topic of “Nothos” was off limits.

It was the same with Angela. They had discussions about the Vasilikós, discussions about the catacombs, discussions about the attic, and they had discussions about the gardens, although once again, to Sophie’s disappointment, Bennett was always kept off the topic list, along with the topic of the word “Nothos.”

The impact of her first Bennett interaction faded and he became an afterthought. The only good thing from the painfully polite situation she was experiencing was the fact her demanding and, for the most part, horrible grandmother had kept her distance.

Now that’s a distance I can embrace.
Until the loneliness became unbearable and she found herself wishing her grandmother would at least nag or yell at her. The silence, the avoidance and the isolation were bad enough, but the thought piercing her mind over and over again was she was being kept in the dark.

Penny was frustrated. Her feet and back hurt, and she had fallen numerous times. She had stopped to rest and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the feeling of the cool wind against her face. She stretched her back and stood up again, looking around. She stood on the edge of a rocky cliff, eyeing the sturdy rope bridge that lay in front of her.

I trust that bridge about as far as I could throw Hades himself.
She focused her eyes on the bridge and concentrated. Nothing happened and she put both hands on her hips and tapped her right foot.

I am out of practice
.
I know the bridge is enchanted and I can’t seem to remove the spell.

She continued to concentrate, as a dull throbbing began in the center of her forehead. Sweat poured down her face.

“This is ludicrous,” she said in frustration, turning her back on the bridge. Taking a few deep breaths she cleared her mind. She began twirling in place, allowing her arms to swing in the air. The energy was building inside her again. When she knew the time was right, she thrust her arms upward, sending the energy burst towards the sky. The wind died away as a rumble exploded in the sky. A sudden gust of wind came from the north and swept across the bridge, blowing away the covering enchantment. What had appeared to be a sturdy bridge was now rotten, with one side almost completely broken away and walking planks that she was sure they would have trouble holding the weight of a bird.

“Tricky, tricky,” she said in a sing-song voice and laughed. “Dear old Haddie, always one for a good practical joke, not that I was ever ignorant enough to fall for any of them.”

She searched for another means to reach the canyon below. A thick and foul-looking fog hung in the air a few hundred feet below and she couldn’t make out a single detail of what she would find down there. The fog crackled and gurgled, making her wrinkle her nose.

“Such nonsense.” she said, picking up her walking staff.

She examined the ground and found the flat stepping stone she was looking for. Covered in dirt, wild grass and rotted wood, the worn face of the stone was carved with the image of a skull. Stepping in front of it, Penny knelt, and removed some of the debris. When she was satisfied, she raised her staff and thrust the point of it into the skull’s gaping mouth.

She waited, but nothing happened.

“I am so very rusty.”

She lifted and slammed her staff three more times, the third time causing a bright spark to ignite, lighting up the skull’s eyes before flickering out. She struck the stone so hard her teeth chattered in her head. In an instant, the stone shifted and the ground creaked and shook under her feet. She could hear earth shake off the side of the cliff, as stone slabs slid out and locked into place. When the ground was still, she walked to the edge and saw her way down to the canyon: a set of stairs disappearing into the thick fog.

“Well, that’s helpful, but enough of these tricks. I mean, really Haddie, how childish of you.” After she'd exposed the rope bridge for the fraud it was, Penny conjured another gust of air and swept away the fog, revealing what she guessed were more than a thousand steps. Her legs and back ached, telling her to go back home.

“You are a dead god, Haddie,” she muttered.

After two hours of maneuvering down the steps, some were so crumbled they stretched the definition of ‘step’ to its breaking point; she reached the bottom and sat down on an outcrop of rocks.

“Maybe,” she said to herself, between huffs of breath. “I’ll maim him. Rip an arm off or maybe just a finger.”

When she had caught her breath, she stood up. Even though the watch pinned to her blouse said two p.m., the canyon was deep enough it only allowed enough light to make a person think it was early twilight. Tall rocks with carvings on them were scattered throughout the canyon floor, reminding her of Stonehenge. She once again encountered the same thick fog, making it difficult for her to see where she needed to go. Using her staff, she tapped her way forward, keeping a wary eye for any surprises she might encounter. There were places where the fog seemed thicker and as she passed through them, she saw a figure, which vanished with an audible swoosh.

“Turn back,” a harsh whisper said.

If sandpaper had a voice
,
this is what it would sound like
.

“You are not welcome, Olympian. Turn back.”

She rolled her eyes. “How annoying,” she replied. “Go away, spirit. I have no need for you.”

“Doom,” the voice said. “Continue at your own peril.”

The air gathered around her as another swoosh passed by. This time, it grazed her cheek and she raised her hand to her face and saw her fingertips were red with blood.

She now saw several places where the fog had gathered. The thing had brought reinforcements. Before she had time to react, she was surrounded.

“Not welcome,” one of the entities said.

“Foul abomination.” another voice said, screeching louder than the others.

“Fallen One.” the first voice said as it took another swipe at her other cheek.

The group of creatures surged onto Penny and attacked.

She screamed as they tore into her arms, her legs, their teeth biting into her shoulder and neck.

A rage built inside her and Penny sensed her powers building. Bolts of energy shot from her hands and with one quick moment she threw them all off, forcing the creatures to retreat into the fog to gather their strength once again.

Not being one to come unprepared, she reached into her pocket and clutched a small white stone.

“How dare you touch me.” she shouted at the creatures. “I, born from Olympus.”

The creatures had gathered their strength again and pounced.

Blood from her cuts coated the stone and it began to glow, brighter and brighter.

“Foul abomination? Look at what a festering bunch of bones you are. How dare you even glance at me,” she shouted.

The creatures fell backward as if stuck with great force, screaming in agony, as the stone’s bright light attacked them and chunks of their bodies evaporated with a sizzling sound. She watched with glee as the guardians cowered. Penny knew they were dying and their ability to hide behind the fog was gone, exposing their skeletal bodies covered in strips of rotting flesh and wrapped in ragged, hooded death shrouds. They had shark-like teeth and their hands were more like claws with large black fingernails. Feeling light-headed and energized, Penny ran toward what was left of the creatures and watched them reach up with one final scream and disappear.

Her wounds were already healing and she wiped the blood from her face. She frowned as she noticed her skirt and blouse were ruined.

Bloodstains left untreated will ruin clothes.
I should have brought my stain stick
.

She continued to tap her way forward and after a few moments ran into what she was looking for—two large, crumbling stones, easily fifty feet in height.

An ancient, lifeless looking grapevine coiled itself around the tall entry stones and across the wide space between them. The trunk of the vine, created from the fusion of thousands of independent ones, was twisted and gnarled, and its tendrils gripped and girdled the stones with such strength the stones appeared to cave inward. What fruit grew from the vines was black and shriveled and dripped with a putrid-smelling sap-like substance. She walked between the two large rocks and heard the moans of the souls trapped within the vines' eternal embrace. Several arms shot-out from within the vines, attempting to grab her, but she chuckled as she stepped out of reach of the beseeching dead.

She stumbled a little and steadied herself, staring in awe at what was in front of her— the entrance to the Underworld. It was as she remembered. Truly a loathsome place, with dead, petrified trees surrounding it. Their trunks were stripped of bark and bleached white so they seemed to glow in the darkness. The entrance, a vast opening in the side of the mountain, resembled a screaming giant’s mouth filled with row after row of razor-sharp teeth that jutted out in all different directions. The path leading to the cave and the cave’s entrance was littered with the bones of both humans and animals. She walked forward quickly, but with cautious steps, to make sure she didn’t trip and fall onto the sharp point of a ribcage or the shard of a shin bone.

The crunching sounds her footfalls made bounced off the walls and became almost deafening. With great relief, she could make out the rocky shoreline where the four rivers of the Underworld converged into a marsh, and she picked up her pace, reaching the edge where an old wooden pier stood, half submerged in the water and covered in moss and slime.

Several dead souls attempted to crawl onto the pier. Their bodies were pale white and had eyes resembling pools of shiny black ink. But the pier’s slippery support logs and rotted edges sent them tumbling back into the putrid water, landing on top of dozens of other souls who were also attempting to climb out. She knew those were the souls who had no money to pay the ferryman. They were damned to stay in the river for hundreds of years before they had paid enough penance to earn their journey into the afterlife. Some of them had the word “Nothos” branded on them, the brand glowing bright red on their white skin. Those souls would never be allowed passage onto the afterlife. They were permanently damned, never to know relief from their suffering.

She eyed the pier and knew in its current state it wouldn’t hold her weight and could cause her to fall in, allowing the dead to drag her down. She put the tip of her shoe on the pier and the soft, spongy wood creaked and broke away, proving her opinion correct. Penny reached into her pocket and pulled out a small vial full of an emerald green liquid.

She raised her arm and threw the vial down onto the pier. Even though the surface was soft, the glass vial shattered, and the green liquid sizzled and bubbled. The vial held a small amount of the substance, but it grew in mass as it worked its way across the surface of the pier’s planks and dripped onto its support logs. The dead, attracted by the glow and sensing a change in the pier, became frenzied and rushed it, only to howl and scream as the liquid burned their tender, milky skin. A few drops dripped into the water and the dead rushed away in fear.

Penny watched as the green liquid both restored the pier and kept the dead away. She tested the restored pier with a toe and once assured it could hold her weight, she stepped out onto it.

Penny looked down into the black, murky water and was surprised to recognize a dead woman with long blond hair who had once been her neighbor. Penny had attended the woman’s funeral and with great enjoyment removed the gold coins from the woman’s eyes and branded the woman with the word “Nothos”; thereby forever damning the woman to her present situation. The woman had dared to complain about Penny’s desolate yard to village officials and Penny had thus made sure she was paid back in spades.

Still holding her staff, Penny reached the end of the pier and ignored the stares of the dead, who grew silent. She slammed the end of her staff three times, the sound echoing off the walls and bouncing off the surface of the water. She waited and listened. She knocked her staff again three times, and after a few moments of silence heard a low, deep horn call back to her. She tapped her staff again and the horn called back again, but this time it was accompanied by the sound of splashes.

The ferryman is coming.
She gathered the small coin purse she carried. Her coins were ancient and she knew Charon would be pleased to receive such treasures. A mist appeared on the water, which grew into a great fog.

“By Zeus, enough with the fog. You would think they would come up with something more original than fog. I shall deduct two points for lack of imagination.” she said, noticing the dead had gathered in even greater numbers in their attempt to gain passage. The boat approaching the pier was old, although anything but decrepit. It was common knowledge among Olympians that Charon took great pride in the maintenance of his ship, and the mere suggestion it was rotted and miserable looking was enough to send the ferryman into a rage.

The truth about the state of Charon’s boat was different. The lower part of the ship was black with a bottom stripe of red that could be seen depending on the tide. In contrast to the dark hull, the main deck was made of seasoned oak, with accents of cherry wood here and there. And there were several masts lacking sails but did have several pale blue banners flying at different heights with gold lettering. Each of the banners had the single letter, Omega, embroidered onto the fabric. Without the use of sails, the current of the dead and the golden oars jutting out of the hull’s side caused the ship’s main movement. Few had ever seen the creatures that worked the oars, although legend tells of beings with glowing green eyes living an eternity of the damned.