For one moment I thought I was left in darkness; then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that faint gray light filtered in through a little slit of a window set high in the wall. I still couldn’t make out much. The air was cold. I turned, groping at the table; it was stone, not wood.
My fingers found cloth, then something soft and cold.
I shuddered, but my mind refused to recognize it until I groped farther and my fingers slid past teeth into a cold, wet mouth.
With a scream, I bolted back against the door. I rubbed my hand viciously against my skirt, but the fabric could not wipe away the memory of touching the dead girl’s tongue.
The dead wife’s tongue. Because now my eyes were growing truly accustomed to the light, and I could see all eight of them, laid out on their stone blocks as if stored for future use.
When I was ten, Astraia and I found a dead cat while playing in the woods. It was half-buried under a drift of leaves; we did not realize until I poked it that it was dead and swollen. It released a noxious stench that made Astraia run away wailing, while I sat choking and weeping with horror. Now, as my breath came quicker and quicker, I thought I could smell that stench again, just a hint of it floating on the cold, still air.
My nails dug into my arms, my harsh breaths the only noise amid dead silence. Ignifex would put me here. When I made my final mistake, he would kill me and put me in this room, and I would lie on the cold stone with my dead mouth hanging open.
With a great effort, I took a deep, slow breath. And let it out in a great shriek. I slammed my fist into the wall, then turned and kicked the door twice, still yelling. Though the door shook in its hinges, it held fast. But when I fell silent, panting for breath, I was no longer panicking. I was furious.
No: I hated.
All my life, I had hated the Gentle Lord, but only in the way that one hates plague or fire. He was a monster who had destroyed my life, who oppressed my entire world, but he was still only a story. Now I had seen him, dined with him, kissed him. I had watched him kill. I had a name for him, even if it was not true. So I could truly hate him. I hated his eyes, his laugh, his mocking smile. I hated that he could kiss me, kill me, or lock me up with perfect ease. Most of all, I hated that he had made me want him.
Hatred was nothing new; I’d been hating my family all my life. But my family I had always had a duty to love, no matter how they had wronged me. Ignifex, I had a duty to destroy. Crouching in the darkness, I realized that I would enjoy it every much.
I felt at my bodice. The golden key I had foolishly left in the door handle, whence Ignifex had doubtless reclaimed it; but the steel key was still safely lodged against my skin, waiting to be used.
I made myself search the walls of the stone room by touch, but there was only one door, and no amount of pounding would make it budge. So finally I settled back against the door to wait. Ignifex would probably let me out tomorrow, when he thought I would be thoroughly cowed and frightened. I would pretend to be so, and get back to exploring as soon as his back was turned.
I had just started to doze off when the rattle of the lock snapped me awake. In an instant, I was on my feet and turning to face the opening door. But it wasn’t Ignifex who stood on the other side; it was Shade.
“I’m sorry.” He touched my cheek. “I came as soon as I could.”
I had been ready to greet Ignifex with hatred and courage, but Shade’s gentle sorrow left me shuddering as I remembered the terror of those first minutes. I grabbed him in a sudden embrace.
“Thank you,” I said into his shoulder. “I’m all right. I’m all right.” I swallowed, my throat tight. “Why does he keep them here?”
Shade shrugged. “Look,” he said, pushing me to turn. He raised his hand and light gleamed into the room. In the sudden illumination I could see that the girls were all young, all lovely, all laid out with their hands crossed over their chests, coins upon their eyes and flowers in their hair. Their bodies were so perfectly preserved, I might have thought they were sleeping—if their faces hadn’t had the pale, waxy emptiness of death.
“I try to make it proper for them,” he said. “But I can’t remember the funerary hymns.”
How many years had they lain here, lacking the final rites that would allow them to cross the river Styx and find peace?
How many years had he watched over them, trying to give them at least a proper death and knowing he had failed?
I gripped his hand. “Kneel with me,” I said. “I’ll teach you.”
As daughter of the manor lord, it had been my duty to assist at the funerals of the poor and orphaned. I had learnt the funerary hymns when I was only six, a book balanced on my head to ensure I had correct posture, Aunt Telomache looming over me with her mouth puckered.
It was one of the few duties I never resented, no matter how my neck ached and my tongue stumbled over the archaic words. The hymns were written by the twin brothers Homer and Hesiod, in the ancient days when Athens was but a cluster of farms and Romana-Graecia not even a dream. When I spoke them—a child in my father’s parlor, standing under a wreath of my dead mother’s hair, the black lace collar of my mourning dress scratching my throat—I felt briefly as if I were no longer an appendage of my family’s tragedy but just another girl in the ocean of mourners who had spoken these words for nearly three thousand years.
Now I cupped my hands upward, closed my eyes, and began to sing.
There are seven funerary hymns: to Hades, Lord of Death; Persephone, his wife; Hermes, the guide of souls; Dionysus, who redeemed his mother from the underworld; Demeter, the patron of crops and motherhood; Ares, god of war; and Zeus, lord of gods and men. Normally only one hymn is sung, to whichever god was the dead one’s patron in life; but I sang them all, hoping it would be enough to grant all eight girls rest. By the time I had finished, my throat was dry and scratchy.