Chapter 9: No One Remembers The Goddess Of Memory
(Peter)
I was falling. Percy Jackson and I had been falling for a few hours at least.
I glanced at Percy. The demigod was deep in thought, but looked fairly calm, unlike me. I was too busy freaking the fuck out. It didn't matter how long we were left in limbo. Damnation is not something I could take lightly.
It had all started when we had gone to the Long Beach Sound after dinner to see if any sea creatures needed our help. For the last few months, Percy and I had been training, fighting monsters, helping sea creatures, and developing our powers in the hope that it would get Percy claimed.
Just as we were going to call it a night, a hippocampus had come to us seeking our aid. It seemed that one of their eggs had been lost. Little known fact, hippocampi lay eggs like fish. For the first few weeks, baby hippocampi incubate until they have strong enough limbs to break the egg membrane and face the ocean currents.
Percy and I had tried to act concerned about the missing egg, but hippocampi were dumb and forgetful creatures. A missing egg could be lost in the same way a person loses a pair of sunglasses on their head.
However, as we began to search the hippocampus's nest, it did look like the egg really was lost. Eventually, Percy, the hippocampus, and I had split up to cover a wider area, but I still hadn't found anything.
Then Percy had cried out. There was a loud suction sound.
"Percy," I called. I swam towards the odd noise and soon saw the cause. There was a dark hole opening up in the ocean floor that was sucking in the seawater like a drain. Percy was caught in the current and desperately trying to get away.
"Percy!"
He looked up at me and shouted, "No! It's too late. Get back!"
But it was too late for me too. The few moments that it had taken me to assess the situation had been enough time for the current to draw me in too. I was no longer moving of my own accord. I scrambled to try and escape. I even attempted to use my hydrokinesis powers, but I couldn't concentrate. The pull from the water kept intensifying as the hole continued to grow.
Within seconds, I slammed into Percy. We both lost our balance and fell into the abyss.
Hurdling down in a saltwater waterfall that led into darkness, we screamed for the first couple minutes or so. Then our throats got sore and we realized that we were still falling. After that we had started talking about this and that as there was nothing else to do.
Then a couple hours ago, I got a brief glance of a circular room with a small ledge before we passed it by and that's when I knew we were officially fucked.[1]
"Percy!" I had said, interrupting his explanation of how he had gotten himself expelled from kindergarten, twice.
"What?" he said. His expression had gone serious.
"I think we're heading to Tartarus," I had blurted out.
"Is that so," he had responded, "because I could have sworn that we were going to Disneyland."
It wasn't that funny, but I had laughed anyway. It was better than the alternative. And fuck, I had been ready for just that.
Training at camp and fighting an occasional scorpion or some giant ants in the forest was one thing, but I really wasn't ready to go on an odyssey to fucking hell. Because that's what it was.
Tartarus was Actual Fucking Hell.
It was the worst part of the underworld. Because I didn't read those books anymore, I didn't know much about it, but it had to be bad.[2]
Percy and I were heading towards eternal damnation.
Even as we tried to keep talking that thought loomed over us and we fell silent in the end. Since then, each of us had been busy thinking our own thoughts, so it was jarring when Percy said "Hey!"
He swam over to me and I noticed the water was looking a little different. It felt different too, but I was still confused when he asked urgently, "Is the water talking to you too?"
"What are you-?"
Forget your worries.
Let me in.
Forget your woes.
"Peter?"
Let me in.
Forget life's pain and life's lessons.
"Peter!"
To be born anew and be born again.
Just let me in. Just let me in.
Just let me in. Just let me in.
"Hey! Peter!" Percy was shaking me.
Forget him too. Forget him too.
No. I struggled to focus on Percy's voice. His face was inches from mine and he looked scared. Since I met him, Percy had almost never looked scared. It woke me up.
"Percy?" I said over the voices.
He gave me a watery smile. "There he is."
I was back. Well kind of…The voices were still there but less.
Let me…. Let…
Become…ter…
"You had me worried."
"Sorry," I said.
Percy shook his head. "Nothing to be sorry about. We just need to make sure to not do what the creepy voice says and stay dry." [3]
I nodded though I was distracted. Now that I wasn't hypnotized, I realized two things:
1. We were slowing down and;
2. The water was now the color of watered-down milk (Though if you ask me it ought to be black and it definitely shouldn't be talking![4]) and the liquid was so opaque that I could see less than a foot in front of me.
Those details pointed to two unpleasant facts. First that Tartarus awaited us and second, "Percy, I think we're in the River Lethe!"
The words seemed to be magic because at last, though we hadn't stopped moving, we were no longer falling.
"The what?" Percy asked. At this point, I could barely make Percy out even though his hands were still on my shoulders.
"It's the river of forgetfulness. It's part of the underworld and Tartarus I guess," I explained to him.
I looked around which didn't do much good since I saw the same milky white emptiness in every direction. Still, I could tell instinctually that our momentum from the waterfall had sunk us deep into the river and the now we were being pulled sideways. The river was probably trying to take us further into hell.
"We gotta fight the current." I told Percy. "I don't think we want to go where its leading."
"Gotcha." He held out one of his hands in front of me so I could not miss it which meant that he nearly smacked me in the face. Then he said, "Grab my hand and let's go."
I looked at Percy Jackson's hand. Another time I might have protested, but now was not the time for machismo. It was holding hands or risking separation, so I took Percy's hand and together we started to swim upstream.
We tried surfacing but the air was unbreathable and the hellish lava landscape of Tartarus was far from encouraging.
After that, we stayed underwater. Luckily, the waterfall we came through was not the end of the river. We kept swimming and came across another smaller waterfall.[5] This one, we could actually swim up. By the time we reached the top, the water temperature had dropped from hot bath to chilly lake.
Percy and I shared a look and we tried surfacing again. I never thought I would be so glad to see the underworld.
"What now?" Percy asked.
"Let's get onto shore and follow the river from there," I suggested. The voices hadn't stopped and they were giving me a headache.
Percy agreed.
We crawled up onto the shore. I dropped Percy's hand and basically collapsed onto all fours. I knew we needed to open one of our knapsacks and get out an ambrosia square, but I was so fucking done.[6] Beside me, Percy wasn't much better. He was still standing, but his eyes were closed and he looked half-dead from exhaustion.
"Good evening, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jackson," a feminine voice called.
I jerked myself back into a standing position and turned around, suddenly alert. And very confused, because the white River Lethe had disappeared. In its place there was a black stream coming from a stone well. On the well wall, there sat a woman holding a hippocampus egg in her lap.
Percy and I shared at look. The woman was definitely a goddess, but I wasn't sure who. She had long and wavy red hair, but that was the only pretty thing about her. Her posture was rigid and she had the sort of face that did more frowning than smiling. She was also wearing a light green toga instead of something more modern like most of the gods did in the PJO canon.
I frowned. She definitely wasn't Persephone. I did not think she was Hecate either. Maybe she was some minor goddess or a water nymph?
Percy, who unlike me wasn't stunned into silence, asked, "Who are you?"
"I am called Mnemosyne," she said.[7]
"Like mnemonic," I said with sudden clarity.
"Mnemonic?" Percy turned to me.
"Uh…" I glanced at the goddess.
"Go on, Mr. Johnson," she said with an encouraging nod.
"Mnemonic, like the ABC song or Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally, my mom is always coming up with new ones for me. They help you remember stuff."
"That's right," she said in a way that made me feel like I was in a classroom.
"So, you're a goddess of remembering?" Percy asked her.
"Half-credit, Mr. Jackson. The correct term is Goddess of Memory," she said, "Though even that is not 100% accurate. Nowadays I consider myself lucky if people remember that much, ironically. People's memories are so faulty these days. It is why fading is so common among my set."
Percy asked, "What do you mean fading?"
The goddess smiled. Though as I suspected it would, the expression looked a little strange on her stern face. "So inquisitive, Mr. Jackson."
Yeah. He was being too inquisitive at the moment because the goddess turned to me and said, "Care to educate your friend, Mr. Johnson?"
It was a test. I hurried to explain. "It's what happens when a god or monster is forgotten. They sort of give up and fade from existence."
"Oh…" Percy said, looking at Mnemosyne like she might die at any minute.
"You will not get to see a live demonstration today, Mr. Jackson. I am an exception as a goddess of memory can never truly be forgotten."
"That's good," Percy said.
"Yes," she said, "It is very fortunate, as now I can help the two of you."
That should have made me happy, but "help" can take many forms.
"Mr. Johnson," she said to me.
"Yes!"
"I think you've answered enough questions for the day. I want Mr. Jackson to answer the next one."
"Okay…" I said. Percy and I shared a nervous look.
"Don't worry. It's an easy question."
Teachers always said that in the same way that doctors said this wouldn't hurt a bit.
I tensed.
She asked, "What brings you here, Mr. Jackson?"
"Oh," Percy said, relieved.
I breathed out my own sigh of relief.
"Sure," he said, "I can answer that. Peter and I came down here looking for that little guy." Percy pointed at the hippocampus. "May we have him back?"
"A fine answer and another question. My answer is yes. Hold tight." She placed the hippocampus egg in the oozing black stream and explained, "If you follow the flow of this river it will lead you back to your camp," The egg bobbed in the water. "but be careful and don't get wet."
I swallowed. I'd be careful alright. That water didn't look healthy.
"Also, come here before you go," she beckoned us forward.
I came towards her hesitantly. Mnemosyne had been nice to us so far, but there was always a risk when talking to strange gods and she kind of acted like a younger version of my hard-ass sixth grade language arts teacher who terrorized all of the lazy, quiet, and/or failing students. That teacher had always been nice to me, but some of my friends…
"I have something for both of you," the goddess said as she stood before us. The woman was tall just like that sixth-grade teacher. "Hold still," she said.
Mnemosyne reached out and touched the back of my head with one of her hands. She moved her hand forward through my hair and then tapped my forehead. She did the same thing to Percy.
"Um…thank you?" Percy said, glancing at me.
I shrugged.
"You are very welcome, Mr. Jackson. I have just given you both a blessing of memory. People often take memory for granted. They are always wanting to forget unpleasant things, but without memory, there would be no time, no wisdom, no stories." She smiled again. This time she actually looked happy which was a good thing, right? "Memories give us a sense of self. Thus, this blessing will ensure you never forget who you are because you will always remember what is most important to you." [8]
"Thank you," I said. It did sound like a good and (more importantly) harmless gift.
"Yeah," Percy said. "Thank you again."
"It was my pleasure boys. Now you better go after that egg before you lose it again," she said pointing past us.
I turned. The egg had already floated quite a way away from us and it was heading back towards Tartarus.
Shit.
I looked back to ask if she was sure that was the way out, but behind me all I saw was the black stream heading into the underworld.
Mnemosyne and her well were gone.
Footnotes
[1] Some of you might remember this as the "Pit Room" from PJO Battle of the Labyrinth.
[2] From all I know of Peter, I'm guessing that he's read Lost Hero and some of Son of Neptune, but was so disgusted that he didn't finish the latter book.
[3] I assume this means they were using their powers to stay dry before this.
[4] Peter is making an allusion to the discrepancy between the river's color in the Demigod Files (black) and HoO (white). As for the river talking, I assume this is artistic license as to my knowledge, the River Lethe and/or its nymph goddess haven't talked in the canon before.
[5] More artistic license.
[6] I have no idea how Percy and Peter got ambrosia squares, but I like to think Andi gave some to Grover so that he could give them to Peter.
[7] Mnemosyne appears in the interactive side story, the Library of Deadly Weapons, but I believe that is after this fic's time. Hence, why Peter has no idea who she is.
[8] We will talk more about this blessing later.