Mythed Connections Read online

  "On the other side. Not a," he paused to chuckle, "'mythology' expert, are you?"

  "Mythology describes every religion, as far as I'm concerned."

  "Tell that to the dog. There is a reason why cats prefer Egypt."

  The boat slid ashore with an unceremonious scrape. "The other side," the ferryman announced.

  "Do I need to tip you to wait for me now, I suppose?" He climbed out warily. The man made no move against him.

  "I have no use for coin, as I said. I will return within the hour." Saying nothing more, he turned the boat back across the black water.

  It was dreadfully quiet.

  The shoreline there was small—a tiny beach that covered a span of about forty feet between the river and a nearly sheer cliff of sandstone. The only place to go was a single opening in the cliff that led into darkness.

  Marcus peered in from the mouth of the tunnel. "Fagles?" His voice echoed and then died.

  A faint meow answered.

  "Fagles?" he called again and stepped into the tunnel. Only then did he realize that he'd lost his flashlight when he fell in the river. Great.

  The meow sounded close. Marcus crept deeper into the blackness, testing each footfall and listening for the cat. Though he went slowly, the blackness soon turned total. Unwilling to touch the wall for fear of finding something unpleasant, he moved straight forward, still calling for Fagles. Each time, the cat answered. It was clearly not happy; the little fur ball was seldom so vocal unless it was disturbed.

  He kept going for what felt like fifty yards before the cat's eyes gleamed at him not ten feet ahead. They blinked once and then darted forward to spring at him. Marcus caught the cat on instinct. Thank goodness the little beast was declawed. Unwilling to risk losing him again, he held onto Fagles as best he could and wondered what to do next.

  The tunnel was straight. Finding his way back shouldn't be a problem, but he hadn't found out where the "dead" people had gone. Did he want to—

  A growl cut through the darkness. The dog! Marcus froze, trying to gauge how far away it was. Fagles began to struggle in his grip.

  There was a second growl, louder this time and decidedly hostile. He still could not tell the distance. Marcus slowly took a step backwards. He could come back. Go back to his house, get a flashlight, maybe a baseball bat . . .

  A terrible bark shot from up the tunnel, followed by a scramble of claws and limbs. Panicked by the sound in the dark, he dropped Fagles and ran for the tunnel entrance. It was coming, and it was big. He could hear it behind him now, huffing with canine savagery, chasing him. All he could do was run for the beach, find a rock or two, and face the dog in the light. He hated dogs! He bloody hated dogs!

  He stumbled, arms flailing in the darkness, and barely managed to regain his balance and find footing on the uneven rock. The beast snarled behind him, closer. Marcus renewed his pace, expecting with every step for the animal to pounce on him from behind.

  And then the light of the tunnel loomed, and he was out. He ran to the edge of the shore where Fagles had retreated, scooped up a few large stones, and wheeled to face the dog with an arm raised to throw in his defense.

  The scream he heard next was his. The sight alone paralyzed him as his mind clawed at its own sanity trying to reconcile the spectacle standing before him at the mouth of the cave.

  It was enormous: the size of a grizzly, but shaped like some horrid wolf. Claws on massive paws scraped the rocks where it stood, its midnight fur bristling, its teeth bared, and its tail—like a giant lizard's—whipping the air behind it. But most terrible were the eyes that stared him down, bloodshot and horrible in their intensity. There were six.

  The thing had three heads.

  It stopped at the mouth of the cave, watching him with a savage light in those six eyes. Marcus stood rooted to the shore, clutching the rocks he'd scooped and, when fear would let him, struggling to wrap some sort of logical explanation around the creature.

  He was still struggling when the old man spoke behind him. "Shall I assume you wish to go back now?"

  Marcus didn't take his eyes off the beast. "What the hell is that?!"

  "The dog," the ferryman said. "Cerberus! Down, boy!"

  Incredibly, the creature stopped snarling and, with a snort, turned and padded contentedly back into the cave.

  When he was sure it was gone, Marcus let himself turn to where the ferryman stood in his boat, about ten feet out from the shore. "Those people you brought. . . did it. . . he. . ."

  "Did he what?" The old man laughed. "Did he eat them? Of course not, they were dead! He lets them in just fine, he just doesn't let them out. But you, as I have said, are not yet dead—something he would gladly rectify if you tried to pass."

  No more, Marcus thought. No more insanity! "Okay, you know what? I—I don't think I care anymore what's going on down here—"

  "But I have told you."

  "—I just want to get back. Now. Take me back!" He didn't want to know what this nightmare was. He just wanted it over. If he could just get back to the house it would all be okay.

  The ferryman grinned. "No."

  "No? No? I have to go! How else do I get back?"

  "Oh, there is no other way to get back. You wouldn't survive a swim across these waters. You were lucky enough to wash ashore when you did the first time. And you obviously cannot go forward. I told you, you do not belong. You refused to listen."

  "But you can't just leave me trapped here!"

  "Can't I? Why should I care if you're trapped? I'm stuck running a ferry at the ass-end of the Underworld for all eternity! You think this is what I wanted to do with my existence? 'It's high-profile!' Hades told me. 'Meet interesting people! Lots of fresh air!' Lying son-of-a-titan. You're only on this river until you starve, then you can go up the tunnel. I'm stuck here until the end of time!"

  "Look, fine, whatever! Don't help me! The next time you bring someone over, I'll just take your boat myself!"

  "Oh, and can you best me, Marcus?" Charon asked. "Go ahead, hit me with those rocks!"

  Anger had Marcus throwing without thinking. The rock shot straight for the ferryman's head and passed right through it. He gaped, and then hurled another, and another. Rock after rock passed through the man until Marcus gave up and collapsed on the ground with a gasp.

  "Bit of a problem you have, I would say. There is one other option I can give you: I'll take you back. In exchange, you'll have a week to bask in the glory of returning your girlfriend's pet, but then you're back here to take over this job for me so that I can finally spend some of that money, for six months a year until you die."

  Marcus stood up and met the ferryman's gaze. "And if I agree to that," he said, "you'll let me go?"

  "If you swear an oath to it, yes."

  Marcus regarded the old man. Who said he'd have to keep his word?

  The bartender watched the old man pause from his story to drain his glass. "And did he swear?"

  The old man grinned. "Well, I am here, aren't I? Oh, I'm certain he never intended to come back to the river once I took him across, but no one can break an oath made by the river Styx—figuratively or geographically."

  "I thought you said it was the Acheron?"

  "They're connected," the old man's companion muttered. "It's complicated."

  The old man nodded. "At any rate, after his week was up, he woke up there and found he couldn't bear to leave. Another drink, if you please."

  "Well, that's one of the more unique stories I've heard told in here," said the bartender as he filled him up. "This one's on me."

  "Oh, I've got plenty of money," he said. The old man placed an ingot on the bar. "Here, enjoy it. You never know how long you've got."

  The bartender gaped at the gold and then scooped it up with an uneasy thank you before he moved away to the other end of the bar.

  The old man's companion watched the bartender go. "Three weeks, five days, seven hours, and . . . seventeen seconds." he whispered.

&nbs
p; Charon grunted and took another drink. "Death," he said, "loosen up."

  Snipe Hunt

  The stream burbled in its course beside the forest path as the first few leaves of autumn surfed their way down it. Janette trotted beside the stream, smiling at the water and ignoring the muffled chirping coming from the sack she carried slung over her shoulder.

  Snipes really were noisy, but at least this one wasn't struggling too much. She was surprised to have found it at all. Before she'd spotted it sleeping under a tree—with its turtle head, falcon body and raccoon tail just like Jack and Dan had described—she'd suspected that the whole "snipe hunt" idea had just been the latest of her brothers' many attempts to ditch their ten year-old sister. Yet now that she'd caught one, she was glowing with pride. The cold air didn't bother her; the snipe was real! Her brothers finally liked her! And she'd caught it all by herself!

  She was skipping and singing, "I caught the snipe!" when she heard the man's laughter.

  "Caught a snipe, have you?" She heard his voice before he quite literally appeared on the path before her, wearing a dark riding cloak that matched his thick black hair. "Are you sure about that?" Behind his neat beard the man's smile was friendly, and his English accent made Janette giggle.

  "I did!" Janette beamed.

  "May I see it?"

  She nearly opened the sack, but stopped herself. "Well, it might get out. I don't want it to escape before my brothers see."

  The man chuckled. "Things can't escape that haven't been caught. I'm afraid your sack is empty."

  The sack suddenly did feel very light. In fact, it felt like nothing at all. She quickly opened it and looked inside. Oh no! "Where is it?" she cried.

  "Never there!" he declared with a grin. "Made you see it! The old bait and switch, I do so love that one! My own invention, you know! Played a bit of a trick on you, I'm afraid."

  Janette threw the sack to the ground. "That's not nice!" There was no snipe. Her brothers really had been trying to ditch her. She could feel the tears coming.

  "All in good fun!" he said. "Why are you crying?"

  She told him.

  "Oh, come now, snipe hunts are a tradition! I invented those, too, actually."

  "But they're always doing it!" she sobbed. "They don't want me around at all!"

  The man's smile faded. "Always?"

  Janette nodded.

  "Well, that does hurt, doesn't it?" He crouched down to her level. "My family's like that, especially my father."

  She sniffed. "Your father?"

  "Oh, Zeus." He smiled. "You know, king of the gods and all that."

  "There's no real Zeus," she said. "You're trying to trick me, too."

  "Oh, sure, not anymore. He picked up and left a while ago. 'Hermes,' he said, 'stay behind and look after things.' Took most of the family. Ditching on a pantheonic scale."

  Janette recognized the name from the book of Greek myths her dad had given her. Her only friends were books, but they were still just books. "You're not Hermes." She was tired of being tricked.

  "Not Hermes? If I weren't Hermes, could I do this?" He suddenly disappeared and then reappeared five feet away, then ten, then twenty. At the last he flew up above her, hung in mid-air, and then slowly floated back to the ground. "God of messengers, scoundrels, and merchants!" he announced with a bow. "Oh, I know what you're thinking: 'Where's the winged sandals? Where's the winged hat?' Truth is, I really don't need them. They're just for show and, quite frankly, hats are rather out of style now."

  Janette blinked in amazement. A real god? "But . . . why do you have an English accent?"

  "Spent a lot of time there in the last thousand years. Zeus always had me carrying messages to Britain to get me off Olympus. When you're the trickster god, people don't always want you around, either. Or maybe it's just because I was the youngest."

  "It's no fun being the youngest," Janette said.

  "It's hard," he agreed. "Finally, they sent me out and left when I was gone. But it's not all bad. I did a lot of freelance messenger work after that. You like the King Arthur legend? I did that one! Oh, sure, the Muses want credit for getting it written, but who do you think handled the distribution? It was the middle of the twelfth century. Moveable type printing wasn't even around until 1455! I met Shakespeare later, too."

  "I'm only ten. I don't know much about him."

  "Oh, he was the bomb, as you kids say. I learned that phrase on the Internet." His face soured. "Great thing, the Internet: global, instant communication everywhere. Of course, I might like it more if it hadn't cost me my bloody job!" He suddenly flashed a dazzling, perfect smile. "Not that I'm bitter, of course."

  "You didn't invent that, too?" Janette asked. He did seem to take credit for a lot.

  "The Internet? Of course not. That was Al Gore, the bugger. Not much for me to do now but play jokes on people. Not that that isn't fun."

  "It's not fun if people are always playing jokes on you."

  "No, rather not, I'd say," Hermes answered. "Maybe you ought to turn the tables."

  Janette looked up at the god and smiled.

  Fifteen minutes later, Janette stepped from the bushes where Jack and Dan were playing on the riverbank and throwing stones at the birds.

  "Find a snipe yet, Janette?" Jack asked with a grin at his brother.

  "Uh huh!" she said happily.

  Dan snorted. "Oh, yeah? Then where is it?"

  "Behind me."

  At that, the bushes shook violently and a giant beast forced its way through them to tower over Jack and Dan. Its great turtle's head opened its mouth to brandish jagged fangs and shake the sky with a thunderous roar. Immense wings buffeted the air as it stepped toward her brothers with an angry swish of its great striped tail.

  "It wouldn't fit in the sack," Janette said innocently.

  When Jack and Dan had torn off screaming into the woods, the giant snipe shifted and became Hermes again. Janette shook with uncontrollable giggling. "That was too cool!" she squealed.

  "Told you it'd be fun," Hermes said.

  She giggled. "They're gonna be mad at me."

  "Oh, but they had it coming, didn't they?" He grinned at her. "I'm just sorry we couldn't include a giant wooden horse somehow. I still can't believe they fell for that one!"

  Playing with Hubris

  The night the "god" first spoke to me, the café was crowded. At nine p.m. on a weekday, it was rare that it would be anything but. I stood at the top of the stairway landing searching for a seat. The café, situated on the mezzanine level of a large bookstore, was my usual writing haunt. Its proximity to a university campus ensured that it would be filled with college students seeking distraction from the books they had spread out across the tables where they sat. I had graduated four years ago myself, but it still felt like the perfect place to write.

  If I could find a table.

  But the seating gods did smile upon me that evening, and I slipped into a table by the edge of the balcony as two women packed up their things. A friendly smile and a tall mocha later, I was comfortably situated, pen in hand, staring at a blank page. It was the same blank page I'd stared at the previous night. And the night before that. Nothing was coming to me. I twirled my pen and looked across the faces in the café, seeing nothing. I closed my eyes and searched the back of my eyelids for inspiration that wasn't there. I looked back down at the page and willed the words to come.

  Nothing.

  "I beg your pardon, but might I make use of this chair?" I looked up at the man who had spoken. He was tall, comfortably dressed in a formal Eddie Bauer sort of way, and had his hand resting on the top of the empty chair across the table from me.

  "Hmm? Oh, go ahead," I told him. Suddenly conscious of the conspicuously blank page before me, I pulled open my writing folder and made a show of leafing through it to appear busy while I waited for him to take the chair away.

  The man left it where it was and sat down at my table instead.

  "Ah . . . oh," I said in
surprise. "I'm sorry, I didn't know that's what you meant." I pulled my paper and mocha a little closer to give him some room on the small surface.

  "You don't mind, I hope? It's just myself and my tea. I abhor standing and drinking, and there are no open tables."

  "Oh, no, that's fine," I said, attempting to be amicable. In truth, I did mind a little. It's harder for me to write if I feel someone is watching me. But I wasn't the sort to deny a seat if asked.

  "You mind a little, I think," the stranger said with a smile, "but I thank you for your sacrifice."

  I wasn't quite sure what to say to that. He sounded sincere enough. I just nodded and went back to my blank page.

  The man took a sip from his cup. "How's the writing coming?" he asked.

  I chuckled uncomfortably and motioned to the white space. "See for yourself."

  "I mean in general," he said. "Heard anything back from the agents you queried?"

  I put my pen down and looked at him. "Do I know you?" I saw nothing readily familiar in his face. His features were strong, but not recognizable.

  "Oh, not personally, no," he smiled. There was something of a twinkle in the experienced depths of his eyes. "I should certainly think you know of me, however." He offered his hand. "Phoebus Apollo." I was shaking his hand before I could reply. His grip was powerful but measured. "Don't mind the Phoebus, though. So few people use it anymore."

  I withdrew my hand. "You're saying you're Apollo. The god."

  He smiled disarmingly. "Well, not 'god' in the sense that people use the word these days, but yes."

  I gave him a couple more cynical blinks. He certainly seemed a well-dressed psychotic. "God of music, of medicine . . . drives the sun across the sky and all that?"

  "None other than," he agreed. "Though I don't actually drive the sun anymore. They've got that whole thing all automated now. Upkeep on the chariot got to be too much of an expense. Progress, you know."

  "Right."

  "You don't believe me," he said, unsurprised.

  "Does that bother you?"

  He laughed once and waved his hand in dismissal. "Oh, certainly not. I've had temples built in my honor. I don't need your approval."