CHAPTER 9
I lie awake in bed mere hours after Medusa and I conclude our conversation. It is not just the certainty of Karmê's divine abduction that is keeping me awake. It is this strange feeling that I am experiencing for perhaps the first time in my life- concern for a mortal. In the past, I rarely gave a second thought to mortals. Their lives are, after all, so brief that time feels like little more than the blink of an eye. I learned early on that is unwise to become attached to mortals because of this reason and the fact that a new generation always replaces the previous one. But now that I have spent time among mortals- eaten, worked, and slept as one- I find that I cannot return to my original view. Just because mortals have brief lifetimes and eventually die is no reason to…
My train of thought disappears completely as a new thought enters my mind. It is so simple and easy that I cannot believe I did not think of it in the first place. At the same time, though, I feel a small sense of dread. If Karmê has been abducted, what guarantee is there that her kidnapper did not kill her? The only way to know for sure (apart from the unpleasant experience of discovering a dead body) is to make a journey to the Underworld and ask Hades if I might search for Karmê's name in his Roster of the Dead.
But will I even be able to find the Underworld? More importantly, what is it going to take for my estranged uncle to cooperate with me? I do not know Hades very well, but my instincts tell me that the Lord of the Underworld is not just going to allow me to peruse his work records. Not without a good reason, at least.
Even though my head feels as though it might explode from the uncertainty behind all these questions, I decide that the best thing to do right now is to sleep. Tomorrow evening I shall make (or attempt to make) my way to the Underworld. But it might be best beforehand to temporarily incapacitate the entire household, including Medusa, before settling out. No one must know of my plans lest they try to stop me. And with that final thought, I close my eyes and eventually drift off to sleep.
It is surprisingly easy to incapacitate a mortal, or maybe I should say, group of mortals. The easiest way to incapacitate a mortal is with drugged wine. This knowledge I credit to my brother Dionysus, who once showed me (in one of his rare bacchanal-free moments) to mix a certain herb into a vat of wine. Once the wine was ready, he then proceeded to drink down the entire vat. Whether he did this to demonstrate the effects of drugged wine or simply forgot that he had just tampered with said liquid, I never found out. This unquenched example of liquid gluttony knocked my pleasure-sodden brother out cold and an entire month passed before he regained consciousness.
Not wanting a similar fate to befall the members of Dorian's household, I take great care to stir small bits of the unnamed herb into one of the kitchen vats of wine. I especially do not want anything bad to happen to Medusa or Aspasia (whose pregnancy is very pronounced by this time), so I make sure to minimize their liquid intake. Once everyone (including the household slaves) is asleep, I gather my satchel of supplies, fasten a grey veil around my head, and venture out into the moonlit night.
Now that I am no longer within the confines of the house, the real difficulties pour down upon me like rapidly-released rain from a storm cloud. Fool that I am, I had spent too much time preventing Dorian's family and servants from impeding me in my mission to realize that I would also have to deal with the other mortals in the vicinity. It seems that almost every male- be he citizen, freedman, or slave- is out and about tonight. Each class is recognizable by the way the individual man dresses and walks. The citizens wear elaborately colored chitons and cloaks and walk confidently while legal freedmen walk less surely and wear only peplos, a sign that they have crossed over the line of slave but not yet into a citizen's circle. The slaves are the easiest to pick out, due to their visible markings and their brisk pace while running to and from the nearby outdoor kitchens.
An eternity seems to pass while I dodge and hide from potential meddlers as I make my way across the compound towards the semi-distant forest that curls around the edge of the landscape. Even though the port is closer than the forest to the town, I decide against stealing a fishing raft and sailing to the Underworld. For one thing, I do not know the Underworld's exact nautical location and the risk of impediment to my mission is high. The forest, on the other hand, is quiet and (hopefully) mortal-free.
I know that every city-state settlement has a secluded place for departing souls that is located on the outskirts. The common mortal belief is that a recently departed soul uses this area as a highway to the Underworld's port of call. Once there, the soul waits for Charon the ferryman to arrive and deliver him or her to the Underworld's main entrance. That, I have heard, is where the real work- judgment and eternal placement of souls- begins. My lingering goddess intuition tells me that the secluded "soul station" area is in the forest, which explains the reason fir this destination.
Making my way to the forest now is no problem but locating the soul station's entrance is quite another story. Despite the moonlight peeking in through the canopy of treetops, the whole area is too dark for my mortal eyes to distinguish any dendrochronological differences between the trees. Even the small lamp I brought with me cannot aid me in this situation. Just as I am about to give up, I hear a hoot and look up just in time to see two round yellow eyes staring down at me from the branch of a nearby darkness-bathed tree. I slowly stretch the lamp out from my body as far as my arm will go and see that my new acquaintance is a common owl. From what little of him I can see, the owl is not very large- probably about the size of a small handbasket.
The owl and I continue to stare at each for a short time before he descends from his perch to the tree's enormously rotund, gnarly trunk. He then pecks his beak against the bark three times before straightening up and flying back to his perch. Silence follows while my mind tries to digest this unusual occurrence. After all, owls do not deign to interact with a mortal during the busy nighttime. Or even at all, for that matter. But this owl is clearly not what he seems. I get the feeling that, as much as my mortal common sense tries to deny it, the owl knows what I am up to and is acting as my guide. Gods will sometimes act as guides for mortals as the latter journey to fulfill quest objectives, so why is it unusual for an animal to act as guide to a goddess-turned-mortal?
It is with this question in my head that I venture up to the tree trunk and mimic the owl's previous action. My mind barely registers that almost instantly the trunk opens from the midsection downwards as though a handsaw has just split it down the middle. Behind the newly-hewn doorway lies a deep blackness that is undeniably a tunnel. Without thinking any further, I step through the doorway and begin my descent into the underground world of darkness.