‘The witch?’
Mima observed the boy curiously: how did he know she had been planning on visiting Cerissa?
He blushed a little; either that, or it could have been the strange painterly effect of his skin.
‘Some people always make the mistake of visiting the witch first!’
The strangely large nosed man was in such a rush to explain his friend’s comment that he leant a little farther out of his hood than he had perhaps intended. He looked for all the world like a raven rather than a man, Mima thought.
‘Obviously, my darling girl,’ the dwarf hurriedly blurted out with a pained smile, ‘you haven’t heard of the tale of Princess Pure of Heart.’
‘You’re right,’ Mima conceded, ‘I haven’t heard that tale.’
‘It’s a shame,’ the boy said.
‘The tale? Or the fact I haven’t heard it?’
‘Why, both of course,’ the raven growled.
‘Both?’
‘It’s a shameful tale; giving hope when there should be none!’
‘And it’s a shame you have never heard of it,’ the boy agreed.
‘For you would realise that to continue to love the dead is pure foolishness!’ the raven added.
‘Bringing you even greater heartbreak!’ The dwarf again, this time with a suitably miserable frown.
‘So what is this tale?’
‘Oh, we don’t have time to tell you it now!’
‘Briefly, a princess foolishly continues to love a prince who has died in battle.’
The boy smiled, as if to show he believed he had explained the tale adequately; and so no more need be said.
‘Foolishness, foolishness!’ The raven shook his head sadly.
‘But I don’t see it that way at all!’ Mima protested.
‘What other way is there to see it?’ the dwarf asked.
‘Well, she loved him obviously…’
Her voice faded, unnerved by the way the three gawped at her expectantly once more.
‘Loved someone who was now dead!’ the dwarf added for her, emphasising the final word as if to make sure she understood its portent.
‘Well, I don’t suppose she would continue loving him forever!’ Mima admitted.
‘Ah, so you agree it’s foolishness to continue seeking out your brother?’ the dwarf asked, triumph in his voice.
‘He told me the witc – Cerissa would help me find him.’
‘Hahhh!’
All three of them uttered a sigh of relief and understanding all at once.
‘Then…if that’s why you wish to call on her, then there is no reason to call at all!’ the dwarf stated assuredly.
‘No reason to risk a call!’ the boy added.
‘Yet that is what…’
‘He was wrong,’ the raven interrupted.
‘Why, if you take the right fork farther down this very road…’
‘The right fork?’
This time, Mima interrupted the dwarf. The dwarf frowned at her rudeness.
‘… then it takes you directly to the Grove of Persephone!’
‘Directly? And yet the–’
She stopped, seeing that the dwarf was discontentedly grimacing at her once more.
If the right fork took her to the Grove of Persephone, then she didn’t need Cerissa. She was almost there, almost in the underworld.
‘Just don’t visit the witch!’ the boy said, his warning immediately backed and explained by his friends.
‘She twists dreams; turns them from their original intent!’
‘It was hoped, long ago, that she would simply die in the wilderness as a child!’
‘Before her troublesome power could become more fully established!’
‘Whereas if your real intent is to merely visit your brother, well; then where could be the harm in that?’
The boy smiled; the dwarf smiled; the raven probably tried to smile.
‘You’ll soon be passing alongside a river of fire, the Phlegethon,’ the dwarf added, noticing that Mima still seemed to be have doubts about their advice, ‘and you’ll see for yourself that the left fork turns as if taking you farther into it.’
‘And this part of the Phlegethon surrounds Tartarus,’ the boy added, ‘where only the very worst of humans and the Titans are contained.’
‘Then the right fork it must obviously be!’ Mima replied brightly, wondering why the captain had insisted they take the left.
Perhaps, of course, because his directional abilities were playing him false once more.
‘Then we wish you well on your journey!’ the dwarf declared equally brightly.
‘And we must be on ours too!’ the boy said with a pleasant grin.
Whistling happily (or at least, the raven seemed to be attempting to whistle) the trio set off along the road once more.
As soon as they had rounded a corner, and were out of sight of Mima, they became leaves once more.
And they rose on a passing wind, chuckling in delight at their own cleverness.
*
Chapter 23
The river of fire threw off a thick haze of heat as Mima and Detritus walked alongside it.
On their other side, they still had the coast, with cool air coming off the sea.
The two sheets of air, one ferociously hot, the other cold, clashed around them. Rising above their heads, it formed into a whirling turbulence that transformed any of the surrounding trees into diffused, mirage-like patterns.
As they had been reliably informed by both the ship and the three travellers, they came to a fork in the road.
There were no signposts there, naturally; yet just as the travellers had told Mima, the left fork continued to run closely alongside the river of fire.
The right fork, on the other hand, ran along the delightfully cool and picturesque coast.
Mima chose the right-hand fork.
Detritus, as advised by the captain, took the left.
‘Mima?’ he said doubtfully, seeing that Mima was heading down what he presumed must be the wrong track. ‘Have you already forgotten that we were advised to take this fork?’
‘But this is the one that takes us towards the Grove of Persephone.’
Naturally, Mima had already explained to Detritus that The Book of Different Stories had provided directions into the underworld.
‘How do you know?’
Detritus observed the two roads, noticing their similarities rather than their differences, and wondering how she could have made this assumption.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Mima grinned, indicating with splayed arms the river of fire on the one hand, the coastal track on the other.
Detritus scratched his head in puzzlement with his one good hand.
‘But the captain–’
‘Who was irredeemably lost, remember?’
‘But you seem so sure that that one is the right path: is there something I’ve missed?’
And so she told him of her encounter with the three travellers.
‘Wait: a child-like Pan, you say?’ he briefly interrupted when she described the boy.
He recalled his own meeting with such a boy; a boy who had wisely advised them not to stay to have their features stilled for all time by being rendered in stone. The next day, too, their journey had passed remarkably quickly – a sure sign that even his friend the bull-headed man was capable of giving false directions.
‘A raven?’ he exclaimed when she came to the part of her tale where the hood partly slipped back from around the face of the large-nosed man.
Hadn’t he seen a raven on the prow of the ship, the night it was led upon the rocks?
Yet weren’t ravens Cerissa’s constructs?
It had appeared to be a real raven, that’s for sure: and yet, it was dark, they were in the midst of a strong wind, of heavily veiling spray and rain.
It had been nothing but chaos, where what had once being straight was now steeply angled, where what had been reasonably stable n
ow rocked, jolted, splintered. He could have imagined anything.
‘Then the right it must be,’ he nodded in agreement as Mima finished her tale.
*
They had walked only a few steps down the right-hand path when they noticed something rather odd.
High above them, swirling in the heat haze of mingling air currents, there appeared to be a large flock of birds, coming from the direction of the left fork.
This wouldn’t be too odd in itself, of course, even taking into account that it was an especially large numbers of birds, passing over them in an almost continuous stream.
In fact, they had spotted these migrating birds before, and given them scant notice.
Now they were a little farther from the diffusing effects of the fire’s heat, however, Mima and Detritus at last had a clearer view of these birds – and saw, to their surprise, that they weren’t birds at all.
They were leaves. Countless leaves.
And yet they swarmed together as if each one had a reason for its chosen course.
‘Would they be, do you think…’ Detritus said, looking Mima’s way, exchanging thoughtful glances with her.
‘Leaves from the Elm of False Dreams?’
‘Which would mean the left fork is a more direct way into the underworld, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Mima agreed. ‘And it would mean we don’t have to explain to Hades and his wife why we want to enter his realm.’
She shuddered at the mere thought of such a meeting.
And so they choose to take the left fork after all.
*
Chapter 24
Although the fire of the Phlegethon continued to run alongside them, it never seemed at any point to be threatening to cut across their path.
The heat rising from it whirled upwards, lifting the swarming leaves ever higher as they swiftly fluttered across the sky.
The farther Mima and Detritus travelled along the path, however, the nearer they drew towards the source of the migrating leaves; and so the trail of massed leaves sank ever lower above them, until they seemed like so many innumerable locusts, noisily clattering through the air.
Like locusts, too, the leaves were here falling prey to birds of every kind.
They swooped up, forming their own whirling, massed formations. They would each grab a leaf in their beak then, dropping back, curl into yet another formation of birds, this one swooping back down to earth, rushing along the path just above Mima and Detritus’s heads. The sound of so many rustling wings was like that of a torrential river.
Yet just as Mima and Detritus had falsely taken the swarming leaves to be birds, it dawned on them that these weren’t birds either.
They were constructs of leaves and twigs.
Cerissa’s creations.
*
The thick throng of excited birds were all swooping towards a small house.
A house crudely constructed of branches, of leaves of every description, of grasses.
Mima and Detritus were half-expecting the house to greet them; yet it remained silent, apart from the cacophonic noise of the massed birds flying in through its open windows.
They were about to knock on the door when they noticed that the birds, far from settling within the house, were continuing on their swift course, flying out through the back windows.
Mima and Detritus took a narrow path leading around the side of the house, taking them out towards the back garden.
Here the flocking of the birds was even more chaotic.
They were dropping their captured leaves into a ridiculously immense pile almost covering the back garden.
Then, with each having completed its appointed task, they whirled around tightly in the air, rushing in a graceful curve over the house’s roof before rising once more to peck at and pick out yet more leaves from the swarm.
In the very midst of the pile of leaves, the whirling birds, there was a kneeling woman.
She was taking the leaves dropped before her, twisting them deftly between her fingers. She was adding twigs for legs, and a globule of saliva, glistening like polished horn, for the eyes.
With a grateful flutter of wings, the bird would rise up from her hands – and joyfully soar into the sky.
*
Chapter 25
The incredibly busy woman at last noticed Mima and Detritus as they drew closer towards her.
She smiled warmly. Letting the last of her creations gleefully fly from her hand, she stood up to greet them, the birds never ceasing in their swirling patterns, their swooping courses.
‘I can see your brother in you,’ Cerissa said to Mima.
‘You know me?’
‘Naturally. I hoped you would come.’
She noticed Detritus’s awed stare at the mass of leaves surrounding her.
‘I fell a little behind in my work,’ she explained. ‘When I foolishly agreed to help Odysseus.’
Detritus nodded, understanding.
‘Why did you help him?’ he asked curiously.
‘Because I saw in a dream that the Greeks must prevail.’
‘Can we trust our dreams?’ Mima asked wisely.
‘Unfortunately not.’
She glanced forlornly at the vast pile of leaves, the countless False Dreams.
‘Then my dream that I might see my brother once more…?’
Cerissa smiled warmly at Mima’s doubtfully hesitant question.
She remained silent, however, simply waved a hand airily – and a robin, one of her creations, gently landed on Mima’s shoulder.
*
Mima was standing on the bank of a swiftly flowing river.
On the other bank there was a boy; her brother.
Naturally, she wanted to rush towards him, to embrace him; yet she knew this would be foolish.
It would result only in her own death.
She must resist this urge to be with him once more. She still had so much to do in her own life.
She could always be with him later.
He would still be here, after all.
‘Mima,’ he said, smiling. ‘You have been far braver than anyone I have never known. But you have travelled far enough; no farther, please. Just as you didn’t want me to leave you, I don’t want you to leave the world until you are truly ready.’
‘And you, Aestus? Were you ready when Cerissa killed you?’
He chuckled.
‘Yes, yes; I know that this is what everyone believes. They believe it because they forever see either a witch or some other malformed beast in their dreams, threatening them.’
‘Then…it really was a lion that killed you?’
‘That and my curiosity, and my love for Cerissa. I wanted only to see why she spent so much time in the woods: I dreamt that she could be mine.’
‘You’re sure it wasn’t one of her constructs?’
‘It was one of her constructs that scared me, made me flee into the jaws of the lion: yet the purpose of her great bear wasn’t to harm. It only existed because she hoped to scare away the curious, like me.’
‘And this is as far as I can get?’ Mima asked disappointedly. ‘After all I’ve been through, I don’t get to be with you?’
‘You know you could be with me: and yet wisely, naturally, you don’t want to be with me if you also have to suffer what all that entails. Yet if you had followed your False Dream through to its final course, this is indeed where you would have been tricked into ending up.’
‘It seems…seems like such an unfair ending to my travels; to have to leave you here.’
Aestus smiled, concerned by the hurt in his sister’s face.
‘You’ve obviously forgotten, but I used to sit you on my knee and tell you a favourite tale of mine.’
*
Chapter 26
Princess Pure of Heart
There was once a famous fountain of magical waters that would ensure a woman would give birth to healthy child.
People from around the world would
flock to this amazing fountain, drinking the waters and returning home knowing for sure that they would soon be with child.
The powerful queen of a neighbouring kingdom had been trying for years to give birth to an heir. She would have dearly loved to try these waters for herself.
Unfortunately for this queen, the two kingdoms had been almost constantly at war now for years, ironically precipitated by her desperation to own these fabulous waters.
The harder she waged war upon this rival kingdom, the more determined they were to deny her the miraculous effects of the waters. They imposed the very strictest controls around the fountain, ensuring none of its magical waters were taken away in any shape, form or size of container.
The queen realised she would have to resort to using magic on her behalf.
She sent a witch to the fountain; one who could catch the droplets of falling water in her hands and instantly freeze them into diamond-like jewels.
These she deftly hid amongst the real jewels of a necklace – pressing the droplets into the beds’ of gems she had removed and dropped into the sparkling waters, where they sank and effectively vanished.
Of course, no one stopped a lady travelling with such fine jewels.
And so, at last, the queen had her magical waters.
*
Not long after, the queen gave birth to a beautiful daughter.
Yet, it seemed, the magical freezing of the magical waters had produced its own unexpected effect.
For although perfect in every other way, the child had a unique flaw; her heart was perfectly transparent, as indeed was the section of her bosom covering it.
Her emotions were on display for all to see, whether she was angry, jealous, or bitter.
She could never, ever hide her true feelings about anything that had upset or disturbed her. She could never lie without the lie being immediately obvious to everyone.
On the other hand, her perfectly transparent heart also meant that people could see when she was being kind, generous, and caring.
And when people saw her concern for them, they loved her.
When they loved her she, of course, loved them back.
As she grew older, she learned how to control her emotions, rather than letting them run wild, rather than letting them rule her.