My knees start to go but I don’t let them. If I let myself sink to the ground, I’ll bury my face in the grass and cry and I won’t do that. Not because my brothers are here. I don’t give a fuck what they see. I don’t give a fuck that they’re witnessing this. Because I won’t get up again. I couldn’t find the last piece of the rosary. I found her. She’s here, and she’s dead.
Ashley’s rubbing my back, saying things I don’t understand, and I wrench my hand out of hers. It hurts too much to be touched. It hurts too much to be alive when my mother is dead. The world closes in, then shrinks away. It doesn’t go far enough.
I feel myself start walking but my brain takes a moment to catch up. A part of me will stand at her graveside forever. It will read those words forever. It will trace the shape of her name again and again until I’m dead, too.
“Poseidon,” Ashley calls. I don’t stop for her. She’s somewhere else. Another world. There’s not enough pull toward her now, though she would understand, she knows this pain, but it’s different. Ashley is alive and my mother is dead.
I don’t know where I’m going. Knowing doesn’t matter. My feet carry me there. Across streets clear of traffic because of the early hour. It’s not far. It’s almost over. When I get there, this will be done. I can let it go. I have to put it down. My bones are crumbling, turning to dust, and Christ, it has to happen faster than this.
My feet hit rock and I reach down and take off my shoes, abandoning them to the sand. The rest of my clothes can come with me. I just need bare feet to reach the sea.
It does not call to me. It pulls me, bodily, both hands reaching through my flesh and wrapping around my spine. My son. My child. Blessed dark. It will be dark soon, and maybe in that place I’ll be with her. Maybe the priest was right and so was I. Neither shall there be any more pain. The sea takes what it loves. It can take me now.
Someone says my name.
It’s lost in the whispers from the water. Dawn splashes gold across the waves, and that’s where I’m going. I’ll be beneath those waves. There will be peace in the dark underworld. I won’t have to keep breathing.
My first step into the sea is warm. It wants me here. This is the right thing. This is the only thing. My second step is like bathwater. It won’t hurt.
My third step doesn’t land.
A shadow blocks my path, twists its hands into my shirt, and shoves me away from the water. I grab for its hands, trying to push them away. A demon. The devil. He speaks to me now, but I can’t be convinced. I can’t hear over the shrieking storm in my head and the blood rushing through my veins.
The sea yanks harder on my spine, my organs crushed from the competing pressure.
“I’m going,” I shout at the shadow.
“Not today,” it shouts back, and the voice—I know that voice.
“Let me go.”
The shadow summons its power and drives me back three steps. Four. I fight against it but it’s my equal. Nothing is my equal. I’ll win eventually. I won’t stop.
It shakes me, rattling my bones. My teeth snap together from the force of the tremor. “Poseidon,” says the voice. “Stop.”
I’m not doing anything. I’m walking to the sea. But I look down at my hands and they’re curled around two wrists clothed in black. Squeezing. Crushing. They should have broken by now. Snapped. That’s how strong I am. And I’m digging in, throwing all my weight into moving forward. The sea is coming for me now, bleeding up onto the shore, and if I don’t go, it will rise until it covers me.
The shadow breaks my hold and throws my arms out of its way. It lunges like a phantom, too quickly for me to stop, and then there are hands on my face. Gripping tight. Not letting go.
“Let me go.” I’ve never sounded more ragged, more broken.
Hades’ face swims into view through a black haze. “I won’t.”
I don’t understand why he’s so tense, his entire body behind the movement, until I feel myself trying to fight him. Pushing against his arms. Trying to get him off-balance. “I can’t do this. I can’t breathe. I can’t.” My jaw won’t unlock. My teeth grind together.
“You don’t have a choice.”
“Neither do you, you fucker. This isn’t your choice.” I find my voice again and lose control of it completely. A set of massive dark gates bursts through the ground behind him, and beyond that is darkness. All darkness. I’m hallucinating. It’s time to go. “I want to go through. I want to go home.” The shouting hurts my ears, but Hades doesn’t flinch. “Let me through, you bastard. Let me through. I’ll pay, if that’s what you want. Name your price to go across. I want to go home.” He can’t see the gates. He doesn’t know that the peace beyond is in the ocean. It’s only a few steps away, in the sea.
“I don’t accept your payment.” He raises his voice to the level of command. To make me hear him. “You’re not going.”
“Why?” I rake my fingernails down the outsides of his hands, but he still doesn’t let go. “Is this your revenge?”
“For what?”
“How can you stand to look at me?” I’m shattering, fighting him anyway, and it is torture. It’s hell. I don’t know how to let him win. I don’t want him to win. “I let him get to you. I let him get to Demeter. He kept getting through and I let him.” I ran so many times. Threw broken bottles so many times. But Cronos was relentless. “I let him—”
“We were children,” Hades yells, and I swear it brings down the dark, short-circuiting something in my mind. “You didn’t let him do anything. He had the choice, and you didn’t. Put it down, Poseidon.”
“It’s in your eyes.” I’m not making any sense. “It’s permanent. I can’t undo it. I couldn’t stop him.”
“There is no debt.” Anyone else would have given up by now. Streaks of blood run down the backs of Hades’ hands, hot under my palms, but he refuses to step aside. “There is no debt between us. I don’t account for it.”
It only makes sense when he says it. He accounts for everything else. His business. His life. It’s in neat ledgers and spreadsheets. “Why not?”
“Because you are my brother. And—” I push against him one more time, hard enough that I almost break through, I almost get past him. “I will stand here as long as it takes to get you to see.”
“She’s dead.”
“I know. But that—” He takes one hand off my face and stabs a finger behind him, at those enormous gates. When he does it, they disappear, blowing away like smoke on the wind. It reveals the glittering blue of the sea. “That is not home.” He digs that hand into his pocket. Brings it out. Shoves his palm against my chest. There’s something there. I get my hand up to his and find a familiar object. Only it’s not broken. It’s whole. The pearls. The cross.
My mother’s rosary.
“I’m trying to go home.” My voice has worn out. It’s the end of the line. “I want to go home.”
“It’s not in the ocean.”
“Then where the fuck is it?”