‘Why does this witch help people?’ Mima asked curiously. ‘If she’s so helpful, why is she hated and despised?’
‘If you help someone, isn’t there always someone else, somewhere else, who will resent the aid you’ve granted them? Won’t there sometimes be those who also suffer? The warriors who face the bull-headed man; the Trojans. Few good deeds result in goodness to all.’
With his one good eye, Detritus glared darkly at the raven. The raven glowered back.
‘A ship powered by the spirits of the dead; just as we suspected.’
With a disgruntled caw, the raven flapped its wings and leapt into the air. Catching a rising current, it soared up across the waves, soared ever higher, and was gone.
And it was a great shame that the raven had left them.
For had it been there, as Mima and Detritus retired for the night, it would have had the good sense and natural instinct to immediately pick up and spit into the ocean the malevolent leaf that silently drifted towards and landed upon the ship’s prow.
*
Although every one of Cerissa’s ravens had flown on ahead to warn of incoming storms, a raven suddenly appeared on the ship’s prow, as if from a dream.
Unlike the crude constructs of Cerissa, this was more real, more natural in its appearance. Even though, of course, it was far more a false construct than anything of Cerissa’s.
The ship’s eyes were painted too low to notice this distinction, however. He listened intently to the raven’s instructions.
The ship sailed on, its great sail of flesh powering it forwards through the highest, most turbulent waves. The massed oars struggled to gain purchase in the increasingly choppy seas. Fortunately, the oarsmen never tired, never lost hope.
The waves beat fiercely, angrily, against the hull of bones and skin. The wind shrieked at the sails of flesh.
Down in the depths, it was quiet, dark, a place where the raging of the storm could never reach. An underworld of the seas.
The great white, many-tentacled beast stirred, however. Its huge, balefully globular eyes saw and resented this unwarranted imposition, this intrusion into its domain.
It rose rapidly, as an avenging angel rushes to fight demons making an incursion into heavenly realms.
Its tentacles lashed out at the ship’s underside before it had even reached the surface. Each one was a thunderous barging of whale-thick flesh and muscle against bone and skin.
The ship rattled, rose high on the tossing tentacles, the gripping, grasping tentacles. Tentacles that wrapped tightly about the hull, the mast, seeking to crush and break and rind.
The bone held fast, however, stronger than wood.
The flesh refused to give way, more alive, more self-repairable, than any canvas.
The oars struck out at sea and monster, each one seemingly little different from the other to oarsmen who are already dead, and fear death no longer.
*
Chapter 20
Mima and Detritus were thrown from their beds, drenched by the waves crashing unstoppably across the deck.
Looking about themselves in a panic, they saw not a kraken but the towering white spume of far reaching, curling, coiling, crushing waves.
They saw not great, unforgivingly baleful eyes, but boulders and rocks, ones now and again uncovered by the waves, now and again swamped and vanishing once more.
Yet they were no less forgiving, no less evilly glowering, than a monster’s eyes.
As if abruptly caught in that monster’s embrace, the ship unexpectedly jolted violently, throwing both Mima and Detritus to the sea-strewn deck.
The ship viciously jerked once more, dashed upon another rock. A rock that at last hungrily tore at and shredded and broke the hull of bone and flesh.
Now Detritus did see baleful eyes.
They weren’t those of the monster, however; they were those of the raven on the prow.
It wasn’t one of the regular ravens, Detritus realised, not one of Cerissa’s constructs.
Before he had time to completely register this, or ponder why it might be so, or what it might mean, the raven spread out its dark wings.
It took advantage of an updraft of a brutally crashing wave.
It soared up and off into the forbiddingly stormy air.
*
The fearsome waves relentlessly pounded the trapped ship until morning, forcing it evermore onto the sharp, eagerly awaiting rocks.
Had it been a normal ship, it wouldn’t have survived.
Had it been of wood, of canvas, everything would have splinted and torn.
Yet flesh, thank god, is ultimately more resilient. Given time, and the right circumstances, it is often self-repairable.
Bone can regrow too.
It would take time, the captain admitted miserably, one of Cerissa’s ravens having at last returned; but they would sail again as soon as everything was seaworthy once more.
Despite its gave injuries, the ship tore itself free of the rocks and headed closer inshore. It beached itself with a relieved yet also painful groan.
Here it could rest. Could mend.
Here, too, Mima and Detritus could safely climb ashore.
They were in the farthest realm of Oceanus, the captain told them, but not in the bay near the Grove of Persephone, where he had hoped to set them down.
They should head south, down the coast, he added. Eventually, they would find themselves walking alongside the Phlegethon, a river of fire.
Even so, when they came to a fork in the road, they should take the left one, leading them away from the coast.
Walking on human feet, rather than running with the powerful hooves of Cerissa’s constructs, now seemed surprisingly slow and arduous, particularly in the hot sun. When Mima and Detritus came to a building on the coast, they gratefully rested for a while in the shade of its great portico.
‘It’s a library,’ Detritus noted with surprise when he saw the inscription carved above the door. ‘It seems rather small to be a library, don’t you think?’
Mima had to agree.
Although the portico, with its soaring columns, was indeed impressive, and maybe even worthy of a famous library, the building lying beyond it was ridiculously small, no bigger than an average building in a small town.
Curious, she opened the door and stepped inside.
The interior was even smaller than she had expected.
There was room only for a cramped reception desk, behind which a tall, sour-faced man stood.
Only slightly beyond him, there was a narrow wall of shelving, but it contained just one book.
She was about to turn around and exit this strange library when the man glowered at her for her rude interruption of his peace.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked imperiously.
‘Oh, I, er…I had hoped I might find a book in here that would help me...’
With a nonchalant wave of his hand, the librarian indicated the book.
‘Then you are in luck, young lady.’
‘But I don’t think…’
She didn’t wish to appear impolite, but Mima was fully aware that one book wasn’t going to provide her with any helpful information.
‘Is there another room?’ she asked, even though she couldn’t see any other doors leading off to hidden rooms.
The librarian looked about him, about the small room.
‘Not that I have ever been made aware of,’ he said.
‘Then there are no more books?’
‘How many do you need?’
‘I was hoping I would find a book telling me how I might enter the underworld.’
The librarian’s face at last shone with understanding.
‘Then I have just the book for you!’ he declared.
Moving from behind his small desk, he approached the shelves and took down the book.
As he handed the book to Mima with a satisfied smile, he also showed her to a small seat and plinth that made up the lower part of t
he shelving.
‘There you are,’ he said happily. ‘Take your time, and enjoy your read.’
Mima looked at the title embossed on the book she had been handed.
It was called The Book of Different Stories
*
Chapter 21
The Book of Different Stories
One day, a famous scribe who had penned many books of great renown was relaxing on his veranda with a glass of particularly fine wine.
Indeed, it was a perfect wine. A flawless wine.
As he mulled over its amazing qualities, the skill that must have gone into its creation, he realised with a pang of distress that his own works were far inferior by comparison.
He had never, ever created the perfect book.
But what would the perfect book be?
It would have to supply the reader with whatever information he or she was seeking.
Was such a book even possible?
Such a book would be enormous, of course. For everyone’s search for information is unique to them.
And yet, and yet…
Don’t our dreams give us the information we need?
(Provided, of course, that it isn’t a false dream, but a true one.)
Each one is unique to us, because we ourselves are unique!
Like our dreams, then, the book would have to be changeable.
It would have to be a different book that each reader picked up and pored over.
It would have to be The Book of Different Stories!
*
Fortunately, the famous scribe lived only a shout away from the Grove of Persephone, which served as a gate to the underworld.
Now naturally, he wasn’t a fool. He was well aware that anyone who set foot in the underworld was unlikely to return.
Yet he had reasoned that the only materials that would help him achieve his goal of creating the perfect book were those in the underworld.
He required a unique form of ink. He would need a unique type of quill. He would have to write on uniquely formed leaves.
Amongst the dark poplars and sterile willows of the grove, he met with Hades and his wife Persephone, and told them of his plan to produce this most perfect of books.
Of course, they listened with interest. Of course, too, he was perfectly free to descend into underworld.
He was even free to seek out the materials he required, provided each realm freely gave them to him.
Indeed, they even allowed him to take wood from their trees, which he insisted he needed for the leaves of his book, the casks in which his ink would be brewed and matured.
However, they warned him, returning to the world of the living was a different matter.
If anyone he came across decided he must stay, then he would be compelled to remain within the confines of the underworld.
‘Then I shall tell each of them one of the tales that will appear in my book,’ he replied, ‘and if anyone declares themselves unsatisfied by my tale, I will willingly remain within the underworld – having failed in my task!’
*
He walked on towards the nearby mountains.
The cavern that would take him deep into the dark underworld was easy to spot even from here, for cloudy vapours continually rose up from it.
Picking out sprigs from the lush poppies and countless herbs surrounding the cavern’s entrance, he descend into the swiftly enveloping darkness: ignoring the wailing of Old Age, Fear, Grief, Anxiety, Agony, Hunger, Death, and Diseases; ignoring even the calling of Guilty Joys.
Amidst it all was Hypnos’s Elm of False Dreams, an Oneiroi clinging to each leaf.
These were the leaves he would need for the paper of his book. Pulped and shredded along with wood from the grove, their ill effects would be tempered with slivers taken from the Gate of Horn.
He asked Morpheus and his brothers, Icelus and Phantasos, for permission to take these items, telling them of his goal to produce the perfect book.
Morpheus appeared human enough, being able to take on the form of man or woman.
‘This sounds like a wonderful idea,’ he gushed, relishing the thought of all the extra confusion a book of false dreams would cause in the world.
(For, of course, the scribe had taken the slivers of horn in secret, and had refrained from explaining his intention of including them in his brew.)
‘Not too many leaves, of course,’ added the slightly more disquieted Icelos who, being capable of taking on the appearance of any animal, had chosen to be a disgruntled bear.
Phantasos was undoubtedly the strangest of the three, remaining almost perfectly silent in his guise as a spring of trickling water: although whether this was because he disagreed with his brothers, the scribe couldn’t be sure.
*
At the rock where the Phlegethon and Cocytus (the River of Wailing) flow into the Acheron (the River of Pain) the scribe took waters from each, mixing them in a large stoppered vase.
Naturally, he had brought a coin to pay Charon to ferry him across. He had also brought with him a cake of honey and wheat, laced with the poppies and herbs, for the three-headed dog Cerberus.
He took more water from the River of Hatred, the Styx. He also took water from the Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness, along with reeds for his quills.
Mixing some of the pulped leaves into his vase of water, he heated his concoction over the intensely hot flames of the Phlegethon. He poured this already thick, dark mixture into his casks, where it drew yet more colour and substance from the wood taken from the grove.
Satisfied he had everything he needed, he set course for home.
*
The three brothers standing by the Elm of False Dreams were surprised when they saw the scribe approaching a second time.
How had he managed to get so far? they each wondered.
Never mind, each told himself, he won’t get past me.
‘What are these tales you tell that got you through to here?’ they asked curiously.
‘It is a different tale for each, naturally,’ the scribe lied.
‘Then it must be a tale for each of us too!’ growled Icelus.
‘So be it,’ the scribe agreed jovially while holding aloft his cask, ‘and while I tell each of you your tale, you must join me in a drink of my dark wine!’
*
On his return home, the scribe immediately set about creating and writing out his most perfect of books
And naturally, the book contained the tale that had ensured his freedom.
It was a tale of a man who was sorely misunderstood.
A man of great and amazing talents.
Talents so great, indeed, that it was impossible for any normal man to appreciate them.
Thereby the man remained forever unappreciated.
Because of the foolishness, the naivety, of others!
It was a tale that resonated with anyone it was told to.
For, of course, it could only be a tale about them, and no one else.
*
Chapter 22
Detritus was out hunting for their lunch, Mima busily building and preparing the fire to roast it on – so no one noticed the three leaves that drifted in on the breeze, and settled on the road.
One instantly became a dwarf, carrying a magical horn.
Another, stranger still, transformed into what could have been a painted sculpture of a child-like Pan. (With it being of stone, and yet also both animal and boy, there had been arguments as to who should actually play this role.)
The third was heavily cloaked and hooded, the hood so large it almost hid the wearer’s enormous, beaked-nose of bright yellow.
They strode out gaily on the dusty track, chatting amiably with each other, as if just normal travellers on the road, as if they had been walking now like this for ages.
‘Why, don’t I know you?’ the dwarf called out in mock surprise as they passed Mima, bent over her crackling fire.
Mima glanced over her shoulder.
‘Why yes, yes,’ she trilled back happily. ‘You’re the one who helped me set off on my quest!’
‘Quest? Why, this sounds most interesting,’ the hooded one growled.
‘What sort of quest could this possibly be?’ the boy asked excitedly.
All three of them stared expectantly at Mima.
‘Why, to find my dead brother, of course!’ she said joyously.
The three (or at least, the two of them whose faces she could see clearly) gaped at her in astonishment.
They shook their heads worriedly, tut-tutted, and pouted in grim admonishment.
‘You don’t think I should be trying to find my brother?’ she asked concernedly. ‘None of you?’
They all shook their heads.
‘Yet it was your horn that set me off on this quest!’
She pointed at the horn the dwarf was clutching.
‘My horn?’
The dwarf sounded appalled by what he obviously took to be an accusation.
‘But you insisted on using it!’ he insisted.
‘Oh no! Perhaps I misheard him! Perhaps I misheard my brother!’ Mima wailed worriedly. ‘May I take another go of your horn, please?’
‘Another go?’ The dwarf shook his head, snatched his horn farther out of Mima’s reach. ‘Not if it’s already caused you so much frankly unwise trouble!’
‘But what else were you expecting to happen when you let me listen to my brother on your horn?’
‘You let her listen to your horn?’
The boy looked towards his friend the dwarf with the same disbelieving, admonishing stare he had used on Mima.
The dwarf shrugged.
‘She insisted! Besides, most people are satisfied with knowing that their loved ones are well! They don’t go setting off on some quest to find them!’
‘Especially not by calling in on the witch on the way!’ the boy added with yet another sorrowful shaking of his head.