No matter which way I struggle through the tides, the vision torments me. I can’t think about it. I beg to forget it all again. The despair consumes me. I’m going to die like this, I know it. Weighed down by my sorrow. By the memories I never reconciled. The forgiveness I never got to plead from my mother.
There’s blackness all around. I can’t see my own hand in front of my face. It’s quiet now. As silent as a tomb.
“Maximus.”
The softest of whispers. It’s Kara’s…and it’s incredible. Beautiful. Like heaven.
“Maximus.”
The kind of heavy sigh I’d expect to rustle through my hair and into my ear as I plunge my body into hers. To be repeated, pitching higher, as I slide against the trembling nerves at her center. So much need in her rasp. So much connection in her heart. I feel it all…
I need to live for it all.
I…must…live…for her.
Kara.
I can only answer her from inside. There’s no breath left to do it now, not even from my preternatural lungs. Every ounce of strength left in my body is focused on simply opening my eyes. On seeking her light in my dark liquid eternity. And then somehow, I don’t know how, swimming for the pinpoint of dawn on the horizon of this disgusting night.
I start rotating my arms. Kicking my legs. It gets easier as soon as the ice chunks break off. I let the violent currents help me along too. The light seems to approve, getting brighter as I flow along. Brighter and so much better…
Because now I see her again.
She’s sparkling. I swim faster, yearning to caress every inch of her burnished skin until I’m filling the air around her with my nonstop worship.
I’m close enough to lunge for her. To finally, finally wrap my arms around her…
I break the water’s surface. Blessed oxygen—or whatever’s standing in for it here—douses my lungs. Though it hurts so good to take it in, more air in my blood means more power in my grip.
But instead of grasping Kara in my arms, I’m crawling up the Acheron shore, looking at nothing between my fingers but inches of stinking mud.
She’s gone. Once more as if she’s never been here.
And I don’t even have the strength to roar about it.
What I do is roll over onto my back and beg the mist, now a shade of bloodred, to just take me. Wherever the destination, it has to be closer to Kara than this forsaken bog. The mist doesn’t answer. Before I can issue the plea again, it’s eclipsed. Two faces, one from the right and one from the left, move in to fill my vision.
“What the hell were you thinking, Maximus? How could you be so foolish?”
Charon chuckles hoarsely. “First dafty since Achilles who’s survived that stunt.”
Gio snaps a stunned stare. “Achilles? You’re serious?”
“Do I look like a teller of tall tales?” The boatsman doesn’t wait for an answer. He swoops his oar over his shoulder and turns back toward the boat he’s run up into the mud. As he shoves off into the ruthless current, I push up until at least my torso is vertical.
“You all right?” Gio murmurs.
“Not sure,” I answer truthfully.
“What hurts?”
His tone is so tender, I actually force myself to look at him. For a second, I’m seeing things differently again. The smile and worry lines have almost fully faded from his face. His trimmed beard is black instead of gray. He’s the Gio of long ago, as Kara must remember him. A grandfather helping her up after a scrape.
Suddenly all I want to do is sit here and waste some more of our time letting him give me all the warm praise that was missing from my own paternal contributor.
Or was it?
I don’t have the time or energy to dissect the memory—or any others it could lead to—now. “I saw Kara again, Gio. In the water. She was right there. She was here, in front of me…”
He frowns. “Again?”
“In the font at the church, I swore I saw her face. Then again at the reflecting pool. On the river, she was so close, I could have touched her. I swear it. I’m not crazy. It was too real.”
“I know.” There’s just as much comfort in his tone, though it’s now backed by some mature force. “Believe me, son. I know.”
I take another moment to catch my breath and absorb his words. “You do?”
He nods somberly. “For me with Charlena, it was the same. You might have noticed, there’s not a mirror in my little backyard abode. Visions of her haunted me for years, and I let them until I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t bear seeing her…without feeling her, hearing her, and even tasting her…”
“Wow,” I say, openly empathetic, though I privately wonder if the torment of missing her ever really abated. Perhaps he’s just gotten used to avoiding mirrors instead.
Just when I think he’s about to wax nostalgic a little more, he rises and offers a hand to help me do the same. “I speak from experience in saying there’s no useful purpose in wallowing about it. Come on. I know a place we might be able to rest.”
While my body protests the idea of any movement, even toward respite, I couldn’t be more mentally on board with the idea of getting away from the river. And if we move on, even if it’s to slog through more of this land that feels like the Everglades invited Antarctica for a sleepover, we’re that much closer to Kara.
The motivation carries me forward through a countless number of miles. I’m so focused on my feet now, angrily ordering them into every lead-filled step, that it takes plowing into Gio to realize he’s stopped. And that he’s done so in a new bath of light.
The soft amber glow pours out of a structure that’s broken through the ice and begun to rise, reminding me of some grand set piece from a pricey Broadway musical.
“The noble castle,” I blurt.
The place has walls and a roof, even if they don’t come with the sprawling meadow and pretty stream from the cantos I’ve memorized. In a way, that’s encouraging as long as it isn’t packed out with a crowd of virtuous pagans either. In any other time and place, I’d brave the crush for a chance to trade ideas with the likes of Homer, Socrates, Orpheus, Hippocrates, and the notable cast of so many more. But right now, all I crave is a clean place to drop my head and make friends with subconsciousness for a few blessed minutes.
“Depends on what you mean by ‘noble,’” Gio says. “But at least we’ve got the place to ourselves.”
“I’m not interested in noble so much as safe,” I return. “I mean, it looks empty—but are you sure?”
The old guy snorts out a laugh. “You asking if I’m sure about absolutely anything here?” He rolls back one shoulder and then the next. “The only answer I can give is that this is what worked before. If we encounter a different game now, then we’ll roll with those rules.”
I accept that with a tight nod. “Fair enough.”
“Of course, we won’t stay long—”
“Ten minutes is all I need.”
A small smirk takes the place of his laugh. “Let’s try to get in a little more than that.”
“All right. Fifteen but no more.” Now I almost laugh too. Are we negotiating nap time in a place where fifteen minutes or fifteen days might have already passed?